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TIME AND TIDE. 



BY WEARE AND TYNE. 



TWENTY-FIVE LETTERS 



WORKING MAN OF SUNDERLAND 




LAWS OP WORK. 



V 




BY 



OHN RUSKIN, LL.D., 



• i 



HONORARY STUDENT OP CHRIST-CHURCH, OXON, 




NEW YORK: 
JOHN WILEY & SONS, 
15 ASTOR PLACE. 

1876. 



##. 



By 

MAR 15 19.; 



S. W. GREEN'S SON, 

PRINTER, 

74 Beekman Street, 
New York. 



c 



CONTENTS 



paqi 
Preface ix 



Letter I. — Co-operation. 

The two kinds of Co-operation — In its highest sense it is not yet 
thought of 1 

Letter II. — Contentment; 

Co-operation, as hitherto understood, is perhaps not expedient 6 

Letter III. — Legislation. 
Of true Legislation. That every Man may be a Law to himself. . . 13 

Letter IV. — Expenditure. 
The Expenses for Art and for War 18 

Letter V. — Entertainment. 

The Corruption of Modern Pleasure. — (Covent Garden Pan- 
tomime.) 22 

Letter VI. — Dexterity. 
The Corruption of Modern Pleasure. — (The Japanese Jugglers.). . . 29 

Letter VII. — Festivity. 
Of the various Expressions of National Festivity 83 



IT CONTENTS. 

Letter Till. — Things Written 

PAOl 

The Four possible Theories respecting the Authority of th« Bible . . 37 
Letter IX. — Thanksgiving. 

The Use of Music and Dancing under the Jewish Theocracy, 

compared with their Use by the Modern French 44 

Letter X. — Wheat-Sifting. 

The Meaning, and actual Operation, of Satanic or Demoniacal 

Influence 54 

Letter XL — The Golden Bough. 

The Satanic Power is mainly Twofold : the Power of causing False- 
hood and the Power of causing Pain. The Resistance is by 
Law of Honour and Law of Delight 64 

Letter XII. — Dictatorship. 
rhe Necessity of Imperative Law to the Prosperity of States 68 

Letter XIII. — Episcopacy and Dukedom. 

The proper Offices of the Bishop and Duke ; or, " Overseer" and 
" Leader" 76 

Letter XIY. — Trade- Warrant. 

The First Group of Essential Laws. — Against Theft by False Work 
and by Bankruptcy. — Necessary Publicity of Accounts 8ft 

Letter XY. — Per-centage. 

The Nature of Theft by Unjust Profits.— Crime can finally be 
arrested only by Education 91 



CONTENTS. T 

Letter XYI. — Education. 

PAGB 

Of Public Education irrespective of Class-distinction. It consists 

essentially in giving- Habits of Mercy, and Habits of Truth ... 99 

Letter XYII. — Difficulties. 

The Relations of Education to Position in Life 110 

Letter XVIII. — Humility. 

The harmful Effects of Servile Employments. The possible 
Practice and Exhibition of sincere Humility by Religious 
Persons 115 

Letter XIX. — Broken Reeds. 

The General Pressure of Excessive and Improper Work, in English 
Life 122 

Letter XX. — Rose-Gardens. 

Of Improvidence in Marriage in the Middle Classes ; and of the 
advisable Restrictions of it 131 

Letter XXI. — Gentillesse. 

Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts ; and of the Proper System 

of Retail Trade 140 

Letter XXII. — The Master. 

Of the normal Position and Duties of the Upper Classes. General 

Statement of the Land Question 148 

Letter XXIII. — Landmarks. 

Of the Just Tenure of Lands ; and the proper Functions of high 

Public Officers 157 



Vi CONTENTS. 

Letter XXIV. — The Rod and Honeycomb. 

PA4M 

The Office of the Soldier 170 

Letter XXY. — Hyssop. 

Of inevitable Distinction of Rank, and necessary Submission to 
Authority. The Meaning of Pure-heartedness. Conclusion. . 182 



-•-♦-♦- 



APPENDICES 



Appendix 1. 

PAOl 

Expenditure on Science and Art 196 

Appendix 2. 
Legislation of Frederick the Great 197 

Appendix 3. 

Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth 200 

Appendix 4. 

Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime 201 

Appendix 5. 
Abuse of Food 203 

Appendix 6. 

Law of Property 204 

Appendix 7. 

Ambition of Bishops 206 



* contents. vii 

Appendix 8. 

pAaa 
Regulations of Trade 206 

Appendix 9. 
Greatness Coal-begotten 208 

Appendix 10. 
Letter to the Editor of the Pall MaU Gazette 20G 




PREFACE. 



The following letters were written to Mr. Thomas 
Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland, during the 
agitation for reform in the spring of the present year. 
They contain, in the plainest terms I could use, the sub- 
stance of what I then desired to say to our English work- 
men, which was briefly this : — " The reform you desire 
may give you more influence in Parliament; but your 
influence there will of course be useless to you, — perhaps 
worse than useless, — until you have wisely made up your 
minds as to what you wish Parliament to do for you ; and 
when you have made up your minds about that, you will 
find, not only that you can do it for yourselves, without 
the intervention of Parliament ; but that eventually no- 
body hut yourselves can do it. And to help you, as far 
as one of your old friends may, in so making up your 
minds, such and such things are what it seems to me you 
should ask for, and, moreover, strive for, with your heart 
and might." 

The letters now published relate only to one division 
of the laws which I desired to recommend to the con- 
sideration of our operatives, — those, namely, bearing upon 
honesty of work, and honesty of exchange. I hope in 
the course of next year that I may be able to complete 



X PREFACE. 

the second part of the series, which vill relate to the 
possible comforts and wholesome laws of familiar house- 
hold life, and the share which a labouring nation may 
attain in the skill, and the treasures, of the higher arts. 
The letters are republished as they were written, with 
here and there correction of a phrase, and omission of one 
or two passages of merely personal or temporary interest ; 
the headings only are added, in order to give the reader 
some clue to the general aim of necessarily desultory dis- 
cussion ; and the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters in reply, 
referred to in the text, are added in the Appendix ; an<* 
will be found well deserving of attention. 

Denmark Hill, December 14. 1867. 




TIME AND TIDE, 
BY WBARE AND TYNE. 



Cetter 1. 

The two hinds of Co-operation. — In its highest sense it is 
not yet thought of. 

Denmark Hill, February 4, 1867. 

My dear Friend — You have now everything I have 
jet published on political economy ; but there are several 
points in these books of mine which I intended to add 
notes to, and it seems little likely I shall get that soon 
done. So I think the best way of making up for the 
want of these is to write you a few simple letters, which 
you can read to other people, or send to be printed, if 
you like, in any of your journals where you think they 
may be useful. 

I especially want you, for one thing, to understaud the 
sense in which the word "co-operation" is used in my 

books. You will find I am always pleading for it; and 

1 



4 TIME AND TIDE. 

not jet feel able to grapple with them that I have left 
untouched, in the books I send you, the question of co 
operative labour. When I use the word " co-operation," 
it is not meant to refer to these new constitutions of 
firms at all. I use the word in a far wider sense, as 
opposed, not to masterhood, but to competition. I do 
not mean for instance, by co-operation, that all the master 
bakers in a town are to give a share of their profits to 
the men who go out with the bread ; but that the masters 
are not to try to undersell each other, nor seek each to 
get the other's business, but are all to form one society, 
selling to the public under a common law of severe 
penalty for unjust dealing, and at an established price. 
I do not mean that all bankers' clerks should be partners 
in the bank ; but I do mean that all bankers should be 
members of a great national body, answerable as a society 
for all deposits ; and that the private business of specu- 
lating with other people's money should take another 
name than that of "banking." And, for final instance, 
I mean by " co-operation " not only fellowships between 
trading Jirms, but between trading nations / so that 
it shall no more be thought (as it is now, with ludicrous 
and vain selfishness) an advantage for one nation to 
undersell another, and take its occupation away from 
it ; but that the primal and eternal law of vital com- 



LETTER I. — CO-OPERATION. 5 

merce shall be of all men understood — namely, that 
every nation is fitted by its character, and the nature 
of its territories, for some particular employments or 
manufactures; and that it is the true interest of every 
other nation to encourage it in such specialty, and by 
no means to interfere with, but in all ways forward 
and protect its efforts, ceasing all rivalship with it, so 
soon as it is strong enough to occupy its proper place. 
You see, therefore, that the idea of co-operation, in the 
sense in which I employ it, has hardly yet entered into 
the minds of political inquirers ; and I will not pursue 
it at present; but return to that system which is be- 
ginning to obtain credence and practice among us. This, 
however, must be in a following letter. 



Cettcr 2. 

Co-operation, as hitherto understood, is perhaps not ex- 
pedient 

February 4, 1867. 

Limiting the inquiry, then, for the present, as proposed 
in the close of my last letter, to the form of co-operation 
which is now upon its trial in practice, I would beg of you 
to observe that the points at issue, in the comparison of 
this system with that of mastership, are by no means hith- 
erto frankly stated ; still less can they as yet be fairly 
brought to test. For all mastership is not alike in princi- 
ple ; there are just aud unjust masterships ; and while, on 
the one hand, there can be no question but that co-opera- 
tion is better than unjust and tyrannous mastership, there 
is very great room for doubt whether it be better than a 
just and benignant mastership. 

At present you — every one of you — speak, and act, as 
if there were only one alternative ; namely, between a 
system in which profits shall be divided in due proportion 
among all ; and the present one, in which the workman is 
paid the least was:es he will take, under the pressure ol 



LETTER II. CONTENTMENT. 7 

competition in the labour-market. But an intermediate 
method is conceivable ; a method which appears to be more 
prudent, and in its ultimate results more just, than the 
co-operative one. An arrangement may be supposed, and 
1 have good hope also may one day be effected, by which 
every subordinate shall be paid sufficient and regular wa- 
ges, according to his rank ; by which due provision shall 
be made out of the profits of the business for sick and su- 
perannuated workers ; and by which the master, being 
held responsible, as a minor king or governor, for the con- 
duct as toell as the comfort of all those under his rule, 
shall, on that condition, bepermitted to retain to his own 
use the surplus profits of the business, which the fact of his 
being its master may be assumed to prove that he has or- 
ganized by superior intellect and energy. And I tl ink 
this principle of regular wage-paying, whether it be in the 
abstract more just, or not, is at all events the more prud jnt ; 
for this reason mainly, that in spite of all the cant which 
is continually talked by cruel, foolish, or designing persons 
about " the duty of remaining content in the position in 
which Providence has placed you," there is a root of the 
very deepest and holiest truth in the saying, which gives 
to it such power as it still retains, even uttered by unHnd 
and unwise lips, and received into doubtful and embittered 
hearts. 



8 TIME AJSTD TIDE. 

If, indeed, no effort be made to discover, in the course 
of their early training, for what services the youths of a 
nation are individually qualified; nor any care taken to 
place those who have unquestionably proved their fitness 
for certain functions, in the offices they could best fulfil, — 
then, to call the confused wreck of social order and life 
brought about by malicious collision and competition an 
arrangement of Providence, is quite one of the most inso- 
lent and wicked ways in which it is possible to take the 
name of God in vain. But if, at the proper time, some 
earnest effort be made to place youths, according to their 
capacities, in the occupations for which they are fitted, I 
think the system of organization will be finally found the 
best, which gives the least encouragement to thoughts oi 
any great future advance in social life. 

The healthy sense of progress, which is necessary to 
the strength and happiness of men, does not consist in the 
anxiety of a struggle to attain higher place or rank, but 
in gradually perfecting the manner, and accomplishing 
the ends, of the life which we have chosen, or which cir- 
cumstances have determined for us. Thus, I think the 
object of a workman's ambition should not be to become 
a master ; but to attain daily more subtle and exemplary 
skill in his own craft, to save from his wages enough to 
enrich and complete Ins home gradually with more deli- 



LETTER II. CONTENTMENT. 9 

cate and substantial comforts ; and to lay by such store as 
shall be sufficient for the happy maintenance of his old 
age (rendering him independent of the help provided for 
the sick and indigent by the arrangement pre-supposed), 
and sufficient also for the starting of his children in a rank 
of life equal to his own. If his wages are not enough 
to enable him to do this, they are unjustly low ; if they 
are once raised to this adequate standard, I do not think 
that by the possible increase of his gains under contin- 
gencies of trade, or by divisions of profits with his mas- 
ter, he should be enticed into feverish hope of an entire 
change of condition ; and as an almost necessary conse- 
quence, pass his days in an anxious discontent with im- 
mediate circumstances, and a comfortless scorn of his daily 
life, for which no subsequent success could indemnify him. 
And I am the more confident in this belief, because, even 
supposing a gradual rise in sociable rank possible for all 
well-conducted persons, my experience does not? lead me to 
think the elevation itself, when attained, would be con- 
ducive to their happiness. 

The grounds of this opinion I will give you in a 
future letter ; in the present one, I must pass to a more 
important point, namely, that if this stability of con- 
dition be indeed desirable for those in whom existing 
circumstances might seem to justify discontent, much 



10 time a:nd tide. 

more mast it be good and desirable for those who al- 
ready possess everything which can be conceived ne- 
cessary to happiness. It is the merest insolence of 
selfishness to preach contentment to a labourer who 
gets thirty shillings a week, while we suppose an active 
and plotting covetousness to be meritorious in a man 
who has three thousand a year. In this, as in all other 
points .of mental discipline, it is the duty of the upper 
classes to set an example to the lower; and to recom- 
mend and justify the restraint of the ambition of their 
inferiors, chiefly by severe and timely limitation of their 
own. And, without at present inquiring into the greater 
or less convenience of the possible methods of accom- 
plishing such an object (every detail in suggestions of 
this kind necessarily furnishing separate matter of dis- 
pute), I will merely state my long fixed conviction, that 
one of the most important conditions of a healthful system 
of social economy, would be the restraint of the prop- 
erties and incomes of the upper classes within certain 
fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy in 
the accumulation of wealth being thus removed, another, 
and a higher ideal of the duties of advanced life would 
be necessarily created in the national mind ; by with- 
drawal of those who had attained the prescribed limits 
of wealth from commercial competition, earlier worldly 



LETTER II. CONTENTMENT. 11 

success, and earlier marriage, with all its beneficent 
moral results, would become possible to the young; 
while the older men of active intellect, whose sagacity 
is now lost or warped in the furtherance of their own 
meanest interests, would be induced unselfishly to occupy 
themselves in the superintendence of public institutions, 
or furtherance of public advantage. 

And out of this class it would be found natural and 
prudent always to choose the members of the legislative 
body of the Commons ; and to attach to the order 
also some peculiar honors, in the possession of which 
such complacency would be felt as would more than 
replace the unworthy satisfaction of being supposed 
richer than others, which to many men is the principal 
charm of their wealth. And although no law of this 
purport would ever be imposed on themselves by the 
actual upper classes, there is no hindrance to its being 
gradually brought into force from beneath, without 
any violent or impatient proceedings ; and this I will 
endeavour to show in my next letter. 



Ccttcr 3. 

Of True Legislation. That every Man may he a Law 

to himself. 

February 17, 1867. 
No, I have not been much worse in health; but I 
was asked by a friend to look over sorne work in which 
you will all be deeply interested one day, so that I 
could not write again till now. I was the more sorry, 
because there were several things I wished to note 
in your last letter; one especially leads me directly to 
what I in any case was desirous of urging upon you. 
You say, "In vol. 6th of Frederick the Great I find 
a great deal that I feel quite certain, if our Queen or 
Government could make law, thousands of our English 
workmen would hail with a shout of joy and gladness." 
I do not remember to what you especially allude, but 
whatever the rules you speak of may be, unless there 
be anything in them contrary to the rights of present 
English property, why should you care whether the 
Government makes them law or not? Can you not, 



LETTER III. LEGISLATION. * 13 

you thousands of English workmen, simply make them 
a law to yourselves, by practising them? 

It is now some five or six years since I first had occa- 
sion to speak to the members of the London Working 
Men's College on the subject of Reform, and the sub- 
stance of what I said to them was this : " You are all 
agape, my friends, for this mighty privilege of having 
your opinions represented in Parliament. The concession 
might be desirable, — at all events courteous, — if only it 
were quite certain you had got any opinions to represent. 
But have you \ Are you agreed on any single thing you 
systematically want ? Less work and more wages, of 
course ; but how much lessening of work do you suppose 
is possible ? Do you think the time will ever come for 
everybody to have no work and all wages ? Or have you 
yet taken the trouble so much as to think out the nature 
of the true connection between wages and work, and to 
determine, even approximately, the real quantity of the 
one, that^an, according to the laws of God and nature, 
be given for the other ; for, rely on it, make what laws 
you like, that quantity only can you at last get? 

" Do you know how many mouths can be fed on an 
acre of land, or how fast those mouths multiply; and 
have you considered what is to be done finally with un- 
feedable mouths ? ' Send them to be fed elsewhere,' do 



14 TIME AND TIDE. 

you say ? Have you, then, formed any opinion as to the 
time at which emigration should begin, or the countries 
to which it should preferably take place, or the kind of 
population which should be left at home? Have you 
planned the permanent state which you would wish Eng- 
land to hold, emigrating over her edges, like a full well, 
constantly ? How full would you have her be of people, 
first ; and of what sort of people ? Do you want her to 
be nothing but a large workshop and forge, so that the 
name of ' Englishman ' shall be synonymous with { iron- 
monger,' all over the world ; or would you like to keep 
some of your lords and landed gentry still, and a few 
green fields and trees? 

" You know well enough that there is not one of these 
questions, I do not say which you can answer, but which 
you have ever thought of answering ; and yet you want to 
have voices in Parliament ! Your voices are not worth a 
rat's squeak, either in Parliament or out of it, till you 
have some ideas to utter with them ; and when* you have 
the thoughts, you will not want to utter them, for you 
will see that your way to the fulfilling of them does not 
lie through speech. You think such matters need debat- 
ing about ? By all means debate about them ; but debate 
among yourselves, and with such honest helpers of your 
thoughts as you can find. If that way you cannot get at 



LETTER in. LEGISLATION. 15 

the truth, do you suppose you could get at it sooner in 
the House of Commons, where the only aim of many of 
the members would be to refute every word uttered in 
your favor ; and where the settlement of any question 
whatever depends merely on the perturbations of the 
balance of conflicting interests?" 

That was, in main particulars, what I then said to the 
men of the Working Men's College ; and in this recur- 
rent agitation about Reform, that is what I would stead- 
fastly say again. Do you think it is only under the 
lacquered splendours of Westminster, — you working men 
of England, — that your affairs can be rationally talked 
over ? You have perfect liberty and power to talk over, 
and establish for yourselves, whatever laws you please, 
so long as you do not interfere with other people's liber- 
ties or properties. Elect a parliament of your own. 
Choose the best men among you, the best at least you 
can find, by whatever system of election you think like- 
liest to secure such desirable result. Invite trustworthy 
persons of other classes to join your council ; appoint 
time and place for its stated sittings, and let this par- 
liament, chosen after your own hearts, deliberate upon 
the possible modes of the regulation of industry, and 
advisablest schemes for helpful discipline of life ; and so 
lay before you the best laws they can devise, which such 



16 TIME AND TIDE. 

of you as were wise might submit to, and teach their 
children to obey. And if any of the laws thus deter- 
mined appeared to be inconsistent with the present cir- 
cumstances or customs of trade, do not make a noise 
about them, nor try to enforce them suddenly on others, 
nor embroider them on flags, nor call meetings in parks' 
about them, in spite of railings and police; but keep 
them in your thoughts and sight, as objects of patient 
purpose, and future achievement by peaceful strength. 

For you need not think that even if yon obtained a 
majority of representatives in the existing parliament, 
you could immediately compel any system of business, 
broadly contrary to that now established by custom. If 
you could pass laws to-morrow, wholly favourable to 
yourselves, as you might think, because unfavourable to 
your masters, and to the upper classes of society, — the 
only result would be, that the riches of the country would 
at once leave it, and you would perish in riot and famine. 
Be assured that no great change for the better can ever 
be easily accomplished, nor quickly ; nor by impulsive, 
ill-regulated effort, nor by bad men ; nor even by good 
men, without much suffering. The suffering must, in- 
deed, come, one way or another, in all greatly critical 
periods ; the only question, for us, is whether we will 
reach our ends (if we ever reach them) through a chain 



LETTER HI. LEGISLATION. 17 

of involuntary miseries, many of them useless, and all 
ignoble ; or whether we will know the worst at once, and 
deal with it by the wisely sharp methods of God-sped 
courage. 

This, I repeat to you, it is wholly in your own power 
to do, but it is in your power on one condition only, that 
of steadfast truth to yourselves, and to all men. If there 
is not, in the sum of it, honesty enough among you to 
teach you to frame, and strengthen you to obey, just 
laws of trade, there is no hope left for you. No political 
constitution can ennoble knaves ; no privileges can assist 
them ; no possessions enrich them. Their gains are 
occult curses ; comfortless loss their truest blessing ; 
failure and pain Nature's only mercy to them. Look to 
it, therefore, first, that you get some wholesome honesty 
for the foundation of all things. Without the resolution 
in your hearts to do good work, so long as your right 
hands have motion in them; and to do it whether the 
issue be that you die or live, no life worthy the name will 
ever be possible to you, while, in once forming the resolu- 
tion that your work is to be well done, life is really won, 
here and for ever. And to make your children capable 
of such resolution, is the beginning of all true education, 
of which I have more to say in a future letter. 



Cetter \. 

The Expenses for Art and for War. 

February 19, 1867. 
In the Pall Mall Gazette of yesterday, second column 
of second page, you will find, close to each other, twc 
sentences which bear closely on matters in hand. The 
first of these is the statement, that in the debate on the 
grant for the Blacas collection, "Mr. Bernal Osborne got 
an assenting cheer, when he said that ' whenever science 
and art were mentioned it was a sign to look after the 
national pockets.' r I want you to notice this fact, i. e. 
(the debate in question being on a total grant of 164,000Z. 
of which 48,000£. only were truly for art's sake, and the 
rest for shop's sake), in illustration of a passage in ray 
Sesame and Lilies, pp. 81 and 82,* to which I shall have 
again to refer you, with some further comments, in the 
sequel of these letters. The second passage is to the effect 
that " The Trades' Union Bill was read a second time, after 
a claim from Mr. Hadfield, Mr. Osborne, and Mr. Sam 
nelson, to admit working men into the commission; to 

* Appendix 1. 



LETTER IV. EXPENDITURE. 19 

which Mr. Watkins answered 'that the working men's 
friend was too conspicuous in the body ; ' and Mr. Roe 
buck, ' that when a butcher was tried for murder it was 
not necessary to have butchers on the jury.' " 

Note this second passage with respect to what I said iu 
my last letter, as to the impossibility of the laws of work 
being investigated in the House of Commons. What 
admixture of elements, think you, would avail to obtain 
so much as decent hearing (how should we then speak of 
impartial judgment?) of the cause of working men, in an 
assembly which permits to one of its principal members 
this insolent discourtesy of language, in dealing with a 
preliminary question of the highest importance ; and per- 
mits it as so far expressive of the whole colour and tone of 
its own thoughts, that the sentence is quoted by one of 
the most temperate and accurate of our daily journals, as 
representing the total answer of the opposite side in 
the debate ? No ; be assured you can do nothing yet at 
Westminster. You must have your own parliament, and 
if you cannot detect enough honesty among you to con- 
stitute a justly-minded one, for the present matters must 
take their course, and that will be, yet awhile, to the 
worse. 

I meant to have continued this subject, but I see twc 
other statements in the Pall Mall Gazette of to-day, with 



20 TIME AND TIDE. 

which, and a single remark upon them, I think it will be 
well to close my present letter. 

1. "The total sum asked for in the army estimates, 
published this morning, is 14,752,200/., being an increase 
of 412,000Z. over the previous year." 

2. " Yesterday the annual account of the navy receipts 
and expenditure for the year ending 31st March, 1866, 
was issued from the Admiralty. The expenditure was 
10,268,215/. 7s." 

Omitting the seven shillings, and even the odd hun- 
dred thousands of pounds, the net annual expendi- 
ture for army and navy appears to be twenty-four 
millions. 

The "grant in science and art," two-thirds of which 
was not in realtiy for either, but for amusement and shop 
interests in the Paris Exhibition — the grant which the 
House of Commons feels to be indicative of general dan- 
ger to the national pockets — is, as above stated, 164,000/. 
Now, I believe the three additional ciphers which turn 
thousands into millions produce on the intelligent English 
mind usually, the effect of — three ciphers. But calculate 
the proportion of these two sums, and then imagine to 
yourself the beautiful state of rationality of any private 
gentleman, who, having regretfully spent 164/. on pic- 
tures for his walls, paid willingly 24,000/. annually to the 



LETTER TV. EXPENDITURE. 21 

policemen who looked after his shutters ! You practical 
English! — will you ever unbar the shutters of your 
brains, and hang a picture or two in those state cham- 
bers? 



Ccttcr 3. 

The Corruption of Modern Pleasure. — {Covent Garde* 
Pantomime.) 

February 25, 1867. 

There is this great advantage in the writing real let- 
ters, that the direct correspondence is a sufficient reason for 
sa} mg, in or out of order, everything that the chances of 
the day bring into one's head, in connection with the 
matter in hand ; and as such things very usually go out 
of one's head again, after they get tired of their lodging, 
they would otherwise never get said at all. And thus 
to-day, quite out of order, but in very close connection 
with another part of our subject, I am going to tell you 
what I was thinking on Friday evening last, in Covent 
Garden Theatre, as I was looking, and not laughing, at 
the pantomime of Ali Baha and the Forty Thieves. 

When you begin seriously to consider the question re- 
ferred to in my second letter, of the essential, and in the 
outcome inviolable, connection between quantity of wages, 
and quantity of work, you will see that " wages " in the 



LETTER V. ENTERTAINMENT. 23 

full sense don't, mean " pay " merely, but the reward, 
whatever it may be, of pleasure as well as profit, and of 
various other advantages, which a man is meant by 
Providence to get during life, for work well done. Even 
limiting the idea to " pay," the question is not so much 
what quantity of coin you get, as — what you can get for 
it when you have it. Whether a shilling a day be good 
pay or not, depends wholly on what a " shilling's worth " 
is ; that is to say, what quantity of the things you want 
may be had for a shilling. And that again depends on 
what you do want ; and a great deal more than that de- 
pends, besides, on " what you want." If you want only 
drink, and foul clothes, such and such pay may be enough 
for you ; if you want good meat and good clothes, you 
must have larger wage ; if clean rooms and fresh air, 
larger still, and so on. You say, perhaps, " every one 
wants better things." So far from that, a wholesome 
taste for cleanliness and fresh air is one of the final at- 
tainments of humanity. There are now not many Euro- 
pean gentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have a 
pure and right love of fresh air. They would put the 
filth of tobacco even into the first breeze of a May 
morning. 

But there are better things even than these, which one 
may want. Grant, that one has good food, clothes, lodg 



24: TIME AND TIDE. 

ing, and breathing, is that all the pay one ought to have 
for one's work? Wholesome means of existence, and 
nothing more ? Enough, perhaps, you think, if every- 
body could get these. It may be so ; I will not, at this 
moment, dispute it; nevertheless, I will boldly say that 
you should sometimes want more than these ; and for one 
of many things more, you should want occasionally to be 
amused ! 

You know the upper classes, most of them, want to be 
amused all day long. They think 

" One moment wnamused a misery 
Not made for feeble men." 

Perhaps you have been in the habit of despising them 
for this ; and thinking how much worthier and nobler it 
was to work all day, and care at night only for food and 
rest, than to do no useful thing all day, eat unearned 
food, and spend the evening as the morning, in " change 
of follies and relays of joy." No, my good friend, that is 
one of the fatallest deceptions. It is not a noble thing, 
in sum and issue of it, not to care to be amused. It 19 
indeed a far higher moral state, but it is a much lower 
creature state than that of the upper classes. 

Yonder poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the 
railroad siding, who drags the detached rear of the train 



LETTER V. ENTERTAINMENT. 25 

to the front again, and slips aside so deftly as the buffers 
meet; and, within eighteen" inches of death every ten 
minutes, fulfils his dexterous and changeless duty all day 
long, content for eternal reward with his night's rest, and 
his champed mouthful of hay ; — anything more earnestly 
moral and beautiful one cannot imagine — I never see the 
creature without a kind of worship. And yonder musi- 
cian, who used the greatest power which (in the art he 
knew) the Father of spirits ever yet breathed into the 
clay of this world ; — who used it, I say, to follow and fit 
with perfect sound the words of the Zauberflote and of 
Don Giovanni — basest and most monstrous of conceivable 
human words and subjects of thought — for the future 
" amusement " of his race ! — No such spectacle of uncon- 
scious (and in that unconsciousness all the more fearful) 
moral degradation of the highest faculty to the lowest 
purpose can be found in history. That Mozart is never- 
theless a nobler creature than the horse at the siding; 
nor would it be the least nearer the purpose of his Maker 
that he, and all his frivolous audiences, should evade the 
degradation of the profitless piping, only by living, like 
horses, in daily physical labour for daily bread. 

There are three things to which man is born* — labour, 

* I ask the reader's thoughtful attention to thfe paragraph, on which 
much of what else I have to say depends. 



26 TIME AND TIDE. 

and sorrow, and joy. Each of these three things has its 
baseness and its nobleness. There is base labour, and 
noble labour. There is base sorrow, and noble sorrow. 
There is base joy, and noble joy. But you must not 
think to avoid the corruption of these things by doing 
without the things themselves. Nor can any life be right 
that has not all three. Labour without joy is base. 
Labour without sorrow is base. Sorrow without labour 
is base. Joy without labour is base. 

I dare say you think I am a long time in coming to 
the pantomime; I am not ready to come to it yet in 
due course, for we ought to go and see the Japanese 
jugglers first, in order to let me fully explain to you 
what I mean. But I can't write much more to-day: 
so I shall merely tell you what part of the play set 
me thinking of all this, and leave you to consider of 
it yourself, till I can send you another letter. The pan- 
tomime was, as I said, All Bdba and the Forty Thieves. 
The forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had 
forty companions, who were girls. The forty thieves 
and their forty companions were in some way mixed 
up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who 
were girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat- 
..j*, in which the Oxford and Cambridge men were 
girls. There was a transformation scene, with a forest, 



LETTER V. ENTERTAINMENT. 27 

in which, the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in 
which the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow, which 
was all of girls. 

Mingled incongruously with these seraphic, and, as 
far as my boyish experience extends, novel, elements 
of pantomime, there were yet some of its old and fast- 
expiring elements. There were, in speciality, two 
thoroughly good pantomime actors — Mr. "W. H. Payne 
and Mr. Frederick Payne. All that these two did, was 
done admirably. There were two subordinate actors, 
who played subordinately well, the fore and hind legs 
of a donkey. And there was a little actress, of whom 
I have chiefly to speak, who played exquisitely the 
little part she had to play. The scene in which she 
appeared was the only one in the whole pantomime 
in which there was any dramatic effort, or, with a few 
rare exceptions, any dramatic possibility. It was the 
home scene, in which Ali Baba's wife, on washing day, 
is called upon by butcher, baker, and milkman, with 
unpaid bills; and in the extremity of her distress 
hears her husband's knock at the door, and opens it 
for him to drive in his donkey, laden with gold. The 
children, who have been beaten instead of getting 
breakfast, presently share in the raptures of their 
father and mother; and the little lady I spoke of— 



28 TIME AND TIDE. 

eight or nine years old — dances a j?as-de-deux with the 
donkey. 

She did it beautifully and simply, as a child ought 
to dance. She was not an infant prodigy; there was 
no evidence, in the finish or strength of her motion, 
that she had been put to continual torture through 
half her eight or nine years. She did nothing more 
than any child, well taught, but painlessly, might easily 
do She caricatured no older person, — attempted no 
curious or fantastic skill. She was dressed decently,— 
she moved decently, — she looked and behaved innocently, 
— and she danced her joyful dance with perfect grace, 
spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through 
all the vast theatre, full of English fathers and mothers 
and children, there was not one hand lifted to give 
her sign of praise but mine. 

Presently after this, came on the forty thieves, who, as 
I told you, were girls ; and, there being no thieving to be 
presently done, and time hanging heavy on their hands, 
arms, and legs, the forty thief-girls proceeded to light 
forty cigars. Whereupon the British public gave them a 
round of applause. Whereupon I fell a-thinking; and 
saw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and dis- 
turbing dream. 



Cetter fi. 

The Corruption of Modern Pleasure. — [The Japanese 
Jugglers.) 

February 28, 1867. 

I have jour pleasant letter with references to Fred- 
erick. I will look at them carefully.* Mr. Carlyle him- 
self will be pleased to hear this letter when he comes 
home. I heard from him last week at Mentone. He is 
well, and glad of the light and calm of Italy. I must 
get back to the evil light, and uncalm, of the places 1 
was taking you through. 

(Parenthetically, did you see the article in The Tin its 
of yesterday on bribery, and the conclusion of the com- 
mission — " ~No one sold any opinions, for no one had any 
opinions to sell.") 

Both on Thursday and Friday last I had been tor 
mented by many things, and wanted to disturb my course 
of thought any way I could. I have told you what en- 
tertainment I got on Friday, first, for it was then that J 

* Appendix 2. 



30 TIME AND TIDE. 

began meditating over these letters ; let me tell you now 
what entertainment I found on Thursday. 

You may have heard that a company of Japanese jug- 
glers has come over to exhibit in London. There has 
long been an increasing interest in Japanese art, which 
has been very harmful to many of our own painters, and 
I greatly desired to see what these people were, and what 
they did. Well, I have seen Blondin, and various Eng- 
lish and French circus work, but never yet anything that 
surprised me so much as one of these men's exercises on 
a suspended pole. Its special character was a close ap- 
proximation to the action and power of the monkey, even 
to the prehensile power in the foot ; so that I asked a 
sculptor-friend who sat in front of me, whether he 
thought such a grasp could be acquired by practice, or 
indicated difference in race. He said he thought it might 
be got by practice. There was also much inconceivably 
dexterous work in spinning of tops — making them pass 
in balanced motion along the edge of a sword, and along 
a level string, and the like ; — the father performing in the 
presence of his two children, who encouraged him con- 
tinually with short, sharp cries, like those of animals. 
Then there was some fairly good sleight-of-hand juggling 
of little interest ; ending with a dance by the juggler, 
first as an animal, and then as a goblin. Now, there was 



LETTER VI. DEXTERITY. 31 

this great difference between the Japanese masks nsed in 
this dance and our common pantomime masks for beasts 
and demons, — that our English masks are only stupidly 
and loathsomely ugly, by exaggeration of feature, or of 
defect of feature. But the Japanese masks (like the fre- 
quent monsters of Japanese art) were inventively fright- 
ful, like fearful dreams ; and whatever power it is that 
acts on human minds, enabling them to invent such, ap- 
pears to me not only to deserve the term " demoniacal," 
as the only word expressive of its character ; but to be 
logically capable of no other definition. 

The impression, therefore, produced upon me by the 
whole scene, was that of being in the presence of human 
creatures of a partially inferior race, but not without 
great human gentleness, domestic affection, and ingenious 
intellect ; who were, nevertheless, as a nation, afflicted by 
an evil spirit, and driven by it to recreate themselves in 
achieving, or beholding the achievement, through years 
of patience, of a certain correspondence with the nature 
of the lower animals. 

These, then, were the two forms of diversion or recrea- 
tion of my mind possible to me, in two days when I 
needed such help, in this metropolis of England. I 
might, as a rich man, have had better music, if I had so 
chosen, though, even so, not rational or helpful; but a 



32 TIME A2TD TIDE. 

poor man could only have these, or worse than these, if 
he cared for any manner of spectacle. (I am not at pres- 
ent, observe, speaking of pure acting, which is a study, 
and recreative only as a noble book is ; but of means of 
mere amusement.) 

Now, lastly, in illustration of the effect of these and 
other such " amusements," and of the desire to obtain 
them, on the minds of our youth, read The Times corre- 
spondent's letter from Paris, in the tenth page of the 
paper, to-day ; * and that will be quite enough for you to 
read, for the present, I believe. 

* Appendix 3. 



' 



Cetter 7. 

Of the various Expressions of National Festivity. 

March 4, 1867. 

The subject which I want to bring before yon is no^ 
branched, and, worse than branched, reticulated, in so 
many directions, that I hardly know which shoot of it to 
trace, or which knot to lay hold of first. 

I had intended to return to those Japanese jugglers, 
after a visit to a theatre in Paris; but I had better, 
perhaps, at once tell you the piece of the performance 
which, in connection with the scene in the English panto- 
mine, bears most on matters in hand. 

It was also a dance by a little girl — though one older 
than Ali Baba's daughter (I suppose a girl of twelve or 
fourteen). A dance, so-called, which consisted only in a 
series of short, sharp contractions and jerks of the body 
and limbs, resulting in attitudes of distorted and quaint 
ugliness, such as might be produced in a puppet by sharp 
twitching of strings at its joints ; these movements being 
made to the sound of two instruments, which between 
them accomplished only a quick vibratory beating and 



34 TIME AOT> TIDE. 

strumming, in nearly the time of a hearth-cricket's song, 
but much harsher, and of course louder, and without any 
sweetness ; only in the monotony and unintended aimless 
construction of it, reminding one of various other insect 
and reptile cries or warnings ; partly of the cicala's hiss ; 
partly of the little melancholy German frog which says 
" JVfu, mu, mu," all summer-day long, with its nose out of 
the pools by Dresden and Leipsic; and partly of the 
deadened quivering and intense continuousness of the 
alarm of the rattlesnake. 

While this was going on, there was a Bible text repeat- 
ing itself over and over again in my head, whether I 
would or no : — " And Miriam the prophetess, the sister 
of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women 
went out after her with timbrels and with dances." To 
which text and some others, I shall ask your attention 
presently ; but I must go to Paris first. 

Not at once, however, to the theatre, but to a book- 
seller's shop, No. 4, Kue Voltaire, where, in the year 
1858, was published the fifth edition of Balzac's Contes 
DvolatiqueSy illustrated by 425 designs by G-ustave 
Dore. 

Both text and illustrations are as powerful as it is ever 
in the nature of evil things to be — (there is no final 
strength but in rightness.) Nothing more witty, nor 



LETTER VII. FESTIVITY. 35 

more inventively horrible, has jet been produced in the 
evil literature, or by the evil art, of man ; nor can I con- 
ceive it possible to go beyond either in their specialities 
of corruption. The text is full of blasphemies, subtle, 
tremendous, hideous in shamelessness, some put into the 
mouths of priests ; the illustrations are, in a word, one 
continuous revelry in the most loathsome and monstrous 
aspects of death and sin, enlarged into fantastic ghastli- 
ness of caricature, as if seen through the distortion and 
trembling of the hot smoke of the mouth of hell. Take 
this following for a general type of what they seek in 
death : one of the most laboured designs is of a man cut in 
two, downwards, by the sweep of a sword — one-half of him 
falls towards the spectator ; the other half is elaborately 
drawn in its section — giving the profile of the divided 
nose and lips; cleft jaw — breast — and entrails; and this 
is done with farther pollution and horror of intent in the 
circumstances, which I do not choose to describe — still 
less some other of the designs which seek for fantastic 
extreme of sin, as this for the utmost horror of death. 
But of all the 425, there is not one which does not vio- 
late every instinct of decency and law of virtue or life, 
written in the human soul. 

Now, my friend, among the many " Signs of the 
Times " the production of a book like this is a significant 



36 TIME AJSTD TIDE. 

one : but it becomes more significant still when con- 
nected with the farther fact, that M. Gustave Dore, the 
designer of this series of plates, has just been received 
with loud acclaim by the British Evangelical Public, as 
the fittest and most able person whom they could at 
present find to illustrate, to their minds, and recommend 
with graciousness, of sacred art, their hitherto unadorned 
Bible for them. 

Of which Bible and of the use we at present make of 
it in England, having a grave word or two to say in my 
next letter (preparatory to the examination of that verse 
which haunted me through the Japanese juggling, and 
of some others also), I leave you first this sign of the 
public esteem of it to consider at your leisure. 



fetter S. 

The Four Possible Theories respecting the Authority of 
the Bible. 

Mwch 7, 1867. 

I have jour yesterday's letter, but must not allow my- 
self to be diverted from the business in hand for this 
once, for it is the most important of which I have to 
write to you. 

You must have seen long ago that the essential dif- 
ference between the political economy I am trying to 
teach, and the popular science, is, that mine is based on 
presumably attainable honesty in men, and conceivable 
respect in them for the interests of others, while the pop- 
ular science founds itself wholly on their supposed con- 
stant regard for their own, and on their honesty only so 
far as thereby likely to be secured. 

It becomes, therefore, for me, and for all who believe 
anything I say, a great primal question on what this pre- 
sumably attainable honesty is to be based. 

"Is it to be based on religion % " you may ask. " Are 
we to be honest for fear of losing heaven if we are dis- 



38 TIME AKD TIDE. 

honest, or (to put it as generously as we may) for fear of 
displeasing God? Or, are we to be honest on specula- 
tion, because honesty is the best policy ; and to invest in 
virtue as in an un depreciable stock ? " 

And my answer is — not in any hesitating or diffident 
way (and you know, my friend, that whatever people may 
say of me, I often do speak diffidently ; though when I am 
diffident of things, I like to avoid speaking of them, if it 
may be ; but here I say with no shadow of doubt) — your 
honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. 
Both your religion and policy must be based on it Your 
honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven ; 
poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over 
the day and over the night. If you ask why you are to be 
honest — you are, in the question itself, dishonoured. " Be- 
cause you are a man," is the only answer; and therefore I 
said in a former letter that to make your children capable 
of honesty is the beginning of education. Make them men 
first, and religious men afterwards, and all will be sound ; 
but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about 
him. 

It is not, therefore, because I am endeavouring to 
lay down a foundation of religious concrete on which to 
build piers of policy, that you so often find me quoting 
Bible texts in defence of this or that principle or assertion. 



LETTER YIH. THINGS WRITTEN. 39 

But the fact that such references are an offence, as I know 
them, to be, to many of the readers of these political essays, 
is one among many others, which I would desire you to 
reflect upon (whether you are yourself one of the offended 
or not), as expressive of the singular position which the 
mind of the British public has at present taken with re- 
spect to its worshipped Book. The positions, honestly ten- 
able, before I use any more of its texts, I must try to de- 
fine for you. 

All the theories possible to theological disputants 
respecting the Bible are resolvable into four, and four only. 

1. The first is that of the comparatively illiterate 
modern religious world, namely, that every word of the 
book known to them as " The Bible " was dictated by the 
Supreme Being, and is in every syllable of it His " Word." 
This theory is of course tenable, though honestly, yet by 
no ordinarily well-educated person. 

2. The second theory is, that although admitting verbal 
error, the substance of the whole collection of books called 
the Bible is absolutely true, and furnished to man by Di- 
vine inspiration of the speakers and writers of it; and 
that every one who honestly and prayerfully seeks for 
such truth in it as is necessary for salvation, will infallibly 
find it there. 

This theory is that held by most of our good and up- 



40 TIME AND TIDE. 

right clergymen, and the better class of the professedly 
religious laity. 

3. The third theory is that the gronp of books which 
we call the Bible were neither written nor collected under 
any Divine guidance, securing them from substantial 
error ; and that they contain, like all other human 
writings, false statements mixed with true, and erring 
thoughts mixed with just thoughts ; but that they never- 
theless relate, on the whole, faithfully, the dealings of the 
one Grod with the first races of man, and His dealings 
with them in aftertime through Christ ; that they record 
true miracles, and bear true witness to the resurrection of 
the dead, and the life of the world to come. 

This is a theory held by many of the active leaders of 
modern thought in England. 

4. The fourth, and last possible theory is that the mass 
of religious Scripture contains merely the best efforts 
which we hitherto know to have been made by any of the 
races of men towards the discovery of some relations with 
the spiritual world; that they are only trustworthy as 
expressions of the enthusiastic visions or beliefs of earnest 
men oppressed by the world's darkness, and have no more 
authoritative claim on our faith than the religious specu- 
lations and histories of the Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, 
and Indians ; but are, in common with all these, to be rev- 



LETTER Vm. THINGS WRITTEN. 43 

erently studied, as containing the best wisdom which 
human intellect, earnestly seeking for help from God, has 
hitherto been able to gather between birth and death. 

This has been, for the last half century, the theory of 
the leading scholars and thinkers of Europe. 

There is yet indeed one farther condition of incredulity 
attainable, and sorrowfully attained, by many men of 
powerfully intellect — the incredulity, namely, of inspira- 
tion in any sense, or of help given by any Divine power, 
to the thoughts of men. But this form of infidelity merely 
indicates a natural incapacity for receiving certain emo- 
tions ; though many honest and good men belong to this 
insentient class. 

The educated men, therefore, who may be seriously ap- 
pealed to, in these days, on questions of moral respon- 
sibility, as modified by Scripture, are broadly divisible 
into three classes, severally holding the three last theories 
above stated. 

Now, whatever power a passage from the statedly au- 
thoritative portions of the Bible may have over the mind 
of a person holding the fourth theory, it will have a pro- 
portionately greater over that of persons holding the 
third or the second. I, therefore, always imagine myself 
speaking to the fourth class of theorists. If I can per- 
suade or influence them, I am logically sure of the others, 



4:2 TIME AND TIDE. 

I say " logically, " for in the actual fact, strange as it may 
seem, no persons are so little likely to submit to a pas- 
sage of Scripture not to their liking, as those who are 
most positive on the subject of its general inspiration. 

Addressing, then, this fourth class of thinkers, I would 
say to them, when asking them to enter on any subject of 
importance to national morals, or conduct, " This book, 
which has been the accepted guide of the moral intelli- 
gence of Europe for some 1,500 years, enforces certain 
simple laws of human conduct which you know have also 
been agreed upon in every main point by all the reli- 
gious and by all the greatest profane writers, of every age 
and country. This book primarily forbids pride, lasciv- 
iousness, and covetousness ; and you know, that all great 
thinkers, in every nation of mankind, have similarly for- 
bade these mortal vices. This book enjoins truth, temper- 
ance, charity, and equity ; and you know that every great 
Egyptian, Greek, and Indian, enjoins these also. You 
know besides, that through all the mysteries of human fate 
and history, this one great law of fate is written on the 
walls of cities, or in their dust, — written in letters of light 
and letters of b.lood, — that where truth, temperance, and 
equity have been preserved, all strength, and peace, and 
joy have been preserved also ; — that were lying, lasciv 
iousness, and covetousness have been practised, there has 



LETTER Vm. THINGS WRITTEN. 43 

followed an infallible, and for centuries irrecoverable, ruin. 
And you know, lastly, that the observance of this common 
law of righteousness, commending itself to all the pure 
instincts of men, and fruitful in their temporal good, is by 
the religious writers of every nation, and chiefly in this 
venerated Scripture of ours, connected with some distinct 
hope of better life, and righteousness, to come. 

" Let it not then offend you if, deducing principles of 
action first from the laws and facts of nature, I neverthe- 
less fortify them also by appliance of the. precepts, or sug- 
gestive and probable teachings of this Book, of which the 
authority is over many around you, more distinctly than 
over you, and which, confessing to be divine, they, at 
least, can only disobey at their moral peril." 

On these grounds, and in this temper, I am in the 
habit of appealing to passages of Scripture in my writ- 
ings on political economy ; and in this temper I will ask 
you to consider with me some conclusions which appear 
to me derivable from that text about Miriam, which 
haunted me through the jugglery; and from certain 
others. 



fetter 9. 

The Use of Music and Dancing under the Jewish The 
ocracy, compared with their Use by the Modern 
French. 

March 10, 1867. 

Having, I hope, made you now clearly understand 
with what feeling I would use the authority of the book 
which the British public, professing to consider sacred, 
have lately adorned for themselves with the work of the 
boldest violator of the instincts of human honour and de- 
cency known yet in art-history, I will pursue by the help 
of that verse about Miriam, and some others, the subject 
which occupied my mind at both theatres, and to 
which, though in so apparently desultory manner, I 
have been nevertheless very earnestly endeavouring to 
lead you. 

The going forth of the women of Israel after Miriam, 
with timbrels and with dances, was, as you doubtless re- 
member, their expression of passionate triumph and 
thankfulness, after the full accomplishment of their deliv- 



LETTER IX. — THAJSTKSGrviNG. 45 

erance from the Egyptians. That deliverance had been 
by the utter death of their enemies, and accompanied by 
stupendous miracle; no human creatures could in an 
hour of triumph be surrounded by circumstances more 
solemn. I am not going to try to excite your feelings 
about them. Consider only for yourself what that see 
ing of the Egyptians " dead upon the sea-shore " meant 
to every soul that saw it. And then reflect that these 
intense emotions of mingled horror, triumph, and grati- 
tude were expressed, in the visible presence of the Deity, 
by music and dancing. If you answer that you do not 
believe the Egyptians so perished, or that God ever ap 
peared in a pillar of cloud, I reply, " Be it so — believe or 
disbelieve, as you choose ; — This is yet assuredly the fact, 
that the author of the poem or fable of the Exodus sup- 
posed that under such circumstances of Divine interposi- 
tion as he had invented, the triumph of the Israelitish 
women would have been, and ought to have been, under 
the direction of a prophetess, expressed by music and 
dancing." 

]STor was it possible that he should think otherwise, at 
whatever period he wrote ; both music and dancing being 
among all great ancient nations an appointed and very 
principal part of the worship of the gods. 

And that very theatrical entertainment at which I 



46 TIME AND TIDE. 

sate thinking over these things for you — that pantomime^ 
which depended throughout for its success on an appeal 
to the vices of the lower London populace, was in itself 
nothing but a corrupt remnant of the religious ceremo- 
nies which guided the most serious faiths of the Greek 
mind, and laid the foundation of their gravest moral aud 
didactic — more forcibly so because at the same time dra- 
matic — literature. Returning to the Jewish history, you 
find soon afterwards this enthusiastic religious dance and 
song employed in their more common and habitual man- 
ner, in the idolatries under Sinai ; but beautifully again 
and tenderly, after the triumph of Jephthah, "And be- 
hold his daughter came out to meet him with timbrels 
and with dances." Again, still more notably at the tri- 
umph of David with Saul, " the women came out of all 
the cities of Israel singing and dancing, to meet King 
Saul with tabrets, with joy, and with instruments of mu- 
sic." And you have this joyful song and dance of the 
virgins of Israel not only incidentally alluded to in the 
most solemn passages of Hebrew religious poetry (as in 
Psalm lxviii., 24, 25, and Psalm "cxlix., 2, 3), but ap- 
proved, and the restoration of it pronriseM as a sign of 
God's perfect blessing, most earnestly by the saddest of 
the Hebrew prophets, and in one of the most beautiful 
of all his sayings. 



LETTER IX. THANKSGIVING. 47 

u The Lord hath appeared of old unto me saying, ' Yea, 
I -have loved thee with an everlasting love. Therefore, 
with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.— I will build 
thee, and thou shalt be built, O Virgin of Israel ; thou 
shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go 
forth in the dances with them that make merry" (Jerein. 
xxxi., 3, 4; and compare v. 13). And finally, you have 
in two of quite the most important passages in the whole 
series of Scripture (one in the Old Testament, one in the 
New), the rejoicing in the repentance from, and remission 
of sins, expressed by means of music and dancing, namely, 
in the rapturous dancing of David before the returning 
ark; and in the joy of the Father's household at the 
repentance of the prodigal son. 

I could put all this much better and more convincingly 
before you, if I were able to take any pains in writing at 
present ; but I am not, as I told you ; being weary and 
ill ; neither do I much care now to use what, in the very 
truth, are but tricks of literary art, in dealing with this so 
grave subject. You see I write you my letter straight- 
forward, and let you see all my scratchings out and 
puttings in ; and if the way I say things shocks you, or 
any other reader of these letters, I cannot help it ; this 
only I know, that what I tell you is true, and written 
more earnestly than anything I ever wrote with my best 



4:& TIME AND TIDE. 

literary care; and that you will find it useful to think 
upon, however it be said. Now, therefore, to draw 
towards our conclusion. Supposing the Bible inspired, in 
any of the senses above defined, you have in these pas- 
sages a positively Divine authority for the use of song 
and dance, as a means of religious service, and expression 
of national thanksgiving. Supposing it not inspired, you 
have (taking the passages for as slightly authoritative as 
you choose) record in them, nevertheless, of a state of 
mind in a great nation producing the most beautiful 
religious poetry and perfect moral law hitherto known to 
us, yet only expressible by them, to the fulfilment of their 
joyful passion, by means of processional dance and choral 
song. 

Now I want you to contrast this state of religious 
rapture with some of our modern phases of mind in 
parallel circumstances. You see that the promise oi 
Jeremiah's, " Thou shalt go forth in the dances of them 
that make merry," is immediately followed by this, 
" Thou shalt yet jplcmt vines upon the mountains of 
Samaria." And again, at the yearly feast to the Lord 
in Shiloh, the dancing of the virgins was in the midst 
of the vineyards (Judges xxi., 21), the feast of the vint- 
age being in the south, as our harvest-home in the 
north, a peculiar occasion of joy and thanksgiving. 



LETTER IX. THANKSGIVING. 49 

I happened to pass the autumn of 1863 in one of the 
great vine districts of Switzerland, under the slopes of 
the outlying branch of the Jura which limits the arable 
plain of the Canton Zurich, some fifteen miles north 
of Zurich itself. That city has always been a renowned 
stronghold of Swiss Protestantism, next in importance 
only to Geneva ; and its evangelical zeal for the con- 
version of the Catholics of Uri, and endeavours to bring 
about that spiritual result by stopping the supplies of 
salt they needed to make their cheeses with, brought 
on (the Uri men reading their Matt. v. 13, in a different 
sense) the battle of Keppel, and the death of the re- 
former, Zwinglius. The town itself shows the most grati- 
fying signs of progress in all the modern arts and 
sciences of life. It is nearly as black as Newcastle — 
has a railroad station larger than the London terminus 
of the Chatham and Dover — fouls the stream of the 
Limmat as soon as it issues from the lake, so that you 
might even venture to compare the formerly simple 
and innocent Swiss river (I remember it thirty years 
ago — a current of pale green crystal) with the highly 
educated English streams of Weare or Tyne; and, 
finally, has as many French prints of dissolute tendency 
in its principal shop windows, as if they had the priv- 
ilege of opening on the Parisian Boulevards. I was 



50 TIME AOT) TIDE. 

somewhat anxious to see what species of thanksgiving 
or exultation would be expressed, at their vintage, by 
the peasantry in the neighbourhood of this much en- 
lightened evangelical and commercial society. It con- 
sisted in two ceremonies only. During the day, the 
servants of the farms where the grapes had been gathered, 
collected in knots about the vineyards, and slowly fired 
horse-pistols, from morning to evening. At night they 
got drunk, and staggered up and down the hill paths, 
uttering at short intervals yells and shrieks, differing 
only from the howling of wild animals by a certain in- 
tended and insolent discordance, only attain .Me by the 
malignity of debased human creatures. I must not 
do the injustice to the Zurich peasantry of implying 
that this manner of festivity is peculiar to them. A 
year before, in 1862, I had formed the intention of 
living some years in the neighbourhood of Geneva, 
and had established myself experimentally on the eastern 
slope of the Mont Saleve ; but I was forced to abandon 
my purpose at last, because I could not endure the 
rabid howling, on Sunday evenings, of the holiday- 
makers who came out from Geneva to get drunk in the 
mountain village. By the way, your last letter, with 
its extracts about our traffic in gin, is very valuable. 
I will come to that part of the business in a little 



LETTER IX. THANKSGIVING. 51 

while. Meantime, by friend, note this, respecting what 
I have told you, that in the very centre of Europe, 
in a country which is visited for their chief pleasure by 
the most refined and thoughtful persons among all 
Christian nations — a country made by God's hand the 
most beautiful in the temperate regions of the earth, 
and inhabited by a race once capable of the sternest 
patriotism and simplest purity of life, your modern 
religion, in the very stronghold of it, has reduced the 
song and dance of ancient virginal thanksgiving to the 
bowlings and staggerings of men betraying, in intoxi- 
cation, a nature sunk more than half way towards 
the beasts ; and you will begin to understand why 
the Bible should have been " illustrated " b 9 G-ustave 
Dore. 

One word more is needful, though this letter is long 
already. The peculiar ghastliness of this Swiss mode of 
festivity is in its utter failure of joy ; the paralysis and 
helplessness of a vice in which there is neither pleasure, 
nor art. But we are not, throughout Europe, wholly 
thus. There is such a thing, yet, as rapturous song and 
dance among us, though not indicative by any means of 
joy over repentant sinners. You must come back to 
Paris with me again. I had an evening to spare there, 
last summer, for investigation of theatres ; and as there 



52 TIME AND TIDE. 

was nothing at any of them that I cared much about see- 
ing, I asked a ,valet-de-place at Meurice's, what people 
were generally going to. He said, " All the English went 
to see the Lanteme Magique." I do not care to tell you 
what general entertainment I received in following, for 
once, the lead of my countrymen ; but it closed with the 
representation of the characteristic dancing of all ages of 
the world ; and the dance given as characteristic of mod- 
ern time was the Cancan, which you will see alluded to in 
the extract given in the note at page 92 of Sesame and 
Lilies. " The ball terminated with a Devilish Chain and 
a Cancan of Hell, at seven in the morning." It was led 
by four principal dancers (who have since appeared in 
London in the Huguenot Captain), and it is many years 
since I have seen such perfect dancing, as far as finish and 
accuracy of art and fulness of animal power and fire are 
concerned. Nothing could be better done, in its own evil 
way, the object of the dance throughout being to express 
in every gesture the wildest fury of insolence and vicious 
passions possible to human creatures. So that you see, 
though for the present we find ourselves utterly incapable 
of a rapture of gladness or thanksgiving, the dance which 
is presented as characteristic of modern civilization is still 
rapturous enough — but it is with rapture of blasphemy. 
Now, just read from the 17th to the 20th page of the pre- 



LETTER IX. THANKSGIVING. 53 

face to Sesame and Lilies, and I will try to bring all these 
broken threads into some warp and woof, in my next two 
letters — if I cannot in one. 



Cetter 10. 

The Meaning, and Actual Operation, of Satanic or 
Demoniacal Influence. 

March 16, 1867. 

I am afraid my weaving, after all, will be but rough 
work — and many ends of threads ill-knotted — but you 
will see there's a pattern at last, meant by them all. 

You may gather from the facts given you in my last 
letter, that as the expression of true and holy gladness 
was in old time statedly offered up by men for a part of 
worship to God their Father — so the expression of false 
and unholy gladness is in modern times, with as much 
distinctness and plainness, asserted by them openly to be 
offered to another spirit: " Chain of the Devil, and Can- 
can of Hell" being the names assigned to these modern 
forms of joyous procession. 

Now, you know that among the best and wisest of our 
present religious teachers, there is a gradual tendency to 
disbelieve, and to preach their disbelief, in the commonly 
received ideas of the Devil, and of his place, and his work. 
While, among some of our equally well-meaning, but fai 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 55 

less wise, religious teachers, there is, in consequence, a 
panic spreading, in anticipation of the moral dangers 
which must follow on the loss of the help of the Devil. 
One of the last appearances in public of the author of the 
Christian Year was at a conclave of clergymen assembled 
in defence of faith in damnation. The sense of the meet- 
ing generally was, that there must be such a place as hell, 
because no one would ever behave decently upon earth un- 
less they were kept in wholesome fear of the fires beneath 
it : and Mr. Keble especially insisting on this view, re- 
lated a story of an old woman, who had a wicked son, 
and who having lately heard with horror of the teaching 
of Mr. Maurice and others, exclaimed pathetically, "My 
son is bad enough as it is, and if he were not afraid of hell, 
what would become of him ! " (I write from memory, and 
cannot answer for the words, but I can for their purport.) 

Now, my friend, I am afraid that I must incur the 
charge of such presumption as may be involved in vari- 
ance from both these systems of teaching. 

I do not merely believe there is such a place as hell. I 
know there is such a place ; and I know also that when 
men have got to the point of believing virtue impossible 
but through dread of it, they have got into it. 

I mean, that according to the distinctness with which 
they hold such a creed, the stain of nether fire has passed 



56 TIME A^D TIDE. 

upon them. In the depth of his heart Mr. Keble could 
not have entertained the thought for an instant ; and I 
believe it was only as a conspicuous sign to the religious 
world of the state into which they were sinking, that this 
creed, possible in its sincerity only to the basest of them, 
was nevertheless appointed to be uttered by the lips of 
the most tender, gracious, and beloved of their teachers. 

" Virtue impossible but for fear of hell " — a lofty creed 
for your English youth — and a holy one ! And yet, my 
friend, there was something of right in the terrors of this 
clerical conclave. For, though you should assuredly be 
able to hold your own in the straight ways of God, with- 
out always believing that the Devil is at your side, it is a 
state of mind much to be dreaded, that you should not 
know the Devil when you see him there. For the proba- 
bility is, that when you see him, the way you are walk- 
ing in is not one of God's ways at all, but is leading you 
mto quite other neighbourhoods than His. On His way, 
indeed, you may often, like Albert Durer's Knight, see 
the Fiend behind you, but you will find that he drops 
always farther and farther behind ; whereas if he jogs 
with you at your side, it is probably one of his own by- 
paths you are got on. And, in any case, it is a highly 
desirable matter that you should know him when you set 
eyes on him, which we are very far from doing in these 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. hi 

days, having convinced ourselves that the graminivorous 
form of him, with horn and tail, is extant no longer. 
But in fearful truth, the Presence and Power of him is 
here ; in the world, with us, and within us, mock as you 
may ; and the fight with him, for the time, sore, and 
widely unprosperous. 

Do not think I am speaking metaphorically, or rhetori- 
cally, or with any other than literal and earnest meaning 
of words. Hear me, I pray you, therefore, for a little 
while, as earnestly as I speak. 

Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct of it by 
which he is meant to live, is exposed to its own special 
form of corruption : and whether within Man, or in the 
external world, there is a power or condition of tempta- 
tion which is perpetually endeavouring to reduce every 
glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to such cor- 
ruption as is possible to them. And the more beautiful 
they are, the more fearful is the death which is attached 
as a penalty to their degradation. 

Take for instance that which, in its purity, is the 
source of the highest and purest mortal happiness — Love. 
Think of it first at its highest — as it may exist in the dis- 
ciplined spirit of a perfect human creature ; as it has so 
existed again and again, and does always, wherever it 
truly exists at all, as the purifying passion of the soul 



58 TIME AOT) TIDE. 

I will not speak of the transcendental and imaginative in 
tensity in which it may reign in noble hearts, as when it 
inspired the greatest religions poem yet given to men ; 
bnt take it in its true and quiet purity in any simple 
lover's heart — as you have it expressed, for instance, 
thus, exquisitely, in the Angel in the House : — 

" And there. With many a blissful tear, 
I vowed to love and prayed to wed 
The maiden who had grown so dear ; — 
Thanked G-od, who had set her in my path 
And promised, as I hoped to win, 
I never would sully my faith 
By the least selfishness or sin ; 
Whatever in her sight I'd seem 
I'd really be ; I ne'er would blend, 
With my delight in her, a dream 
'Twould change her cheek to comprehend ; 
And, if she wished it, would prefer 
Another's to my own success ; 
And always seek the best for her 
With unofficious tenderness." 

Tal e this for the pure type of it in its simplicity ; and 
then think of what corruption this passion is capable. I 
will gi\>e you a type of that also, and at your very doors. 
I cannot refer you to the time when the crime happened ; 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 59 

but it was some four or five years ago, near Newcastle, 
and it has remained always as a ghastly landmark in my 
mind, owing to the horror of the external circumstances. 
The body of the murdered woman was found naked, 
rolled into a heap of ashes, at the mouth of one of youi 
pits. 

Take those two limiting examples, of the Pure Pas- 
sion, and of its corruption. Now, whatever influence it 
is, without or within us, which has a tendency to degrade 
the one towards the other, is literally and accurately 
" Satanic." Amd this treacherous or deceiving spirit is 
perpetually at work, so that all the worst evil among us is 
a betrayed or corrupted good. Take religion itself: the 
desire of finding out God, and placing one's self in some 
true son's or servant's relation to Him. The Devil, that 
is to say, the deceiving spirit within us, or outside of us, 
mixes up our own vanity with this desire ; makes us 
think that in our love to God we have established some 
connection with Him which separates us from our fellow- 
men, and renders us superior to them. Then it takes but 
one wave of the Devil's hand ; and we are burning them 
alive for taking the liberty of contradicting us. 

Take the desire of teaching — the entirely unselfish and 
noble instinct for telling to those who are ignorant, the 
truth we know, and guarding them from the errors we 



60 TIME AND TIDE. 

see them in danger of; — there is no nobler, no more con- 
stant instinct in honourable breasts; but let the Devil 
formalise, and mix the pride of a profession with it — get 
foolish people entrusted with the business of instruction, 
and make their giddy heads giddier by putting them up 
in pulpits above a submissive crowd — and you have it 
instantly corrupted into its own reverse ; you have an 
alliance against the light, shrieking at the sun, and moon, 
and stars, as profane spectra : — a company of the blind, 
beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. " The 
heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the 
laws of creation are treacherous; the poles of the earth 
are out of poise. But we are true. Light is in us only. 
Shut your eyes close and fast, and we will lead you." 

Take the desire and faith of mutual help ; the virtue 
of vowed brotherhood for the accomplishment of com- 
mon purpose (without which nothing can be wrought by 
multitudinous bands of men) ; let the Devil put pride 
of caste into it, and you have a military organization 
applied for a thousand years to maintain that higher 
caste in idleness by robbing the labouring poor ; let the 
Devil put a few small personal interests into it, and you 
have all -faithful deliberation on national law rendered 
impossible in the parliaments of Europe, by the antag- 
onism of parties. 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 61 

Take the instinct for justice, and the natural sense 
of indignation against crime ; let the Devil colour it 
with personal passion, and you have a mighty race of 
true and tender-hearted men living for centuries in such 
bloody feud that every note and word of their national 
songs is a dirge, and every rock of their hills is a grave- 
stone. Take the love of beauty, and power of imagina- 
tion, which are the source of every true achievement in 
art; let the Devil touch them with sensuality, and they 
are stronger than the sword or the flame to blast the 
cities where they were born, into ruin without hope. 
Take the instinct of industry and ardour of commerce, 
which are meant to be the support and mutual mainte- 
nance of man ; let the Devil touch them with avarice, 
and you shall see the avenues of the exchange choked 
with corpses that have died of famine. 

Now observe — I leave you to call this deceiving spirit 
what you like — or to theorise about it as you like. All 
that I desire you to recognise is the fact of its being here, 
and the need of its being fought with. If you take the 
Bible's account of it, or Dante's, or Milton's, you will 
receive the image of it as a mighty spiritual creature, 
commanding others, and resisted by others; if you take 
^Eschylus's or Hesiod's account of it, you will hold it 
for a partly elementary and unconscious adversity of fate, 



62 TIME AJSTD TIDE. 

and partly for a group of monstrous spiritual agencies, 
connected with death, and begotten out of the dust ; if 
you take a modern rationalist's, you will accept it for 
a mere treachery and want of vitality in our own moral 
nature exposing it to loathsomeness of moral disease, as 
the body is capable of mortification or leprosy. I do 
not care what you call it, — whose history you believe 
of it, — nor what you yourself can imagine about it ; the 
origin, or nature, or name may be as you will, but the 
deadly reality of the thing is with us, and warring 
against us, and on our true war with it depends what- 
ever life we can win. Deadly reality, I say. The puff- 
adder or horned asp are not more real. Unbelievable, — 
those, — unless you had seen them; no fable could have 
been coined out of any human brain so dreadful, within 
its own poor material sphere, as that blue-lipped serpent 
— working its way sidelong in the sand. As real, but 
with sting of eternal death — this worm that dies not, 
and fire that is not quenched, within our souls, or around 
them. Eternal death, I say — sure, that, whatever creed 
you hold ; — if the old Scriptural one, Death of perpetual 
banishment from before God's face ; if the modern ration- 
alist one, Death eternal for us, instant and unredeemable 
ending of lives wasted in misery. 

That is what this unquestionably present — this, ac- 



LETTER X. WHEAT-SIFTING. 63 

cording to his power, tfrawi-present — fiend, brings us to 
daily. He is the person to be "voted" against, my 
working friend ; it is worth something, having a vote 
against Mm, if yon can get it ! Which you can, indeed ; 
but not by gift from Cabinet Ministers ; you must work 
warily with your own hands, and drop sweat of heart's 
blood, before you can record that vote effectually. 
Of which more in next letter. 



Ccticr 11. 

The Satanic Power is mainly Twofold ; the Power of 
causing Falsehood and the Power of causing Pam. 
The Resistance is by Law of Honour and Law of 
Delight. 

March 19, 1867. 

You may perhaps have thought my last three or four 
letters mere rhapsodies. They are nothing of the kind ; 
they are accurate accounts of literal facts, which we have 
to deal with daily. This thing, or power, opposed to 
God's power, and specifically called " Mammon " in the 
Sermon on the Mount, is in deed and in truth a con- 
tinually present and active enemy, properly called " Arch- 
enemy," that is to say, " Beginning and Prince of 
Enemies," and daily we have to record our vote for, 
or against him. Of the manner of which record we 
were next to consider. 

This enemy is always recognisable, briefly in two func- 
tions. He is pre-eminently the Lord of Lies and the 
Lord of Pain. Wherever lies are, he is; wherever 
pain is, he has been — so that of the Spirit of Wisdom 



LETTER XI. THE GOLDEN BOUGH. 65 

(who is called God's Helper, as Satan His Adversary) 
it is written, not only that by her Kings reign, and 
Princes decree justice, but also that her ways are ways 
of Pleasantness, and all her paths Peace. 

Therefore, you will succeed, you working men, in 
recording your votes against this arch-enemy, precisely 
in the degree in which you can do away with falsehood 
and pain in your work and lives ; and bring truth into 
the one, and pleasure into the other ; all education being 
directed to make yourselves and your children capable of 
Honesty, and capable of Delight ; and to rescue your- 
selves from iniquity and agony. And this is what I 
meant by saying in the preface to Unto this Last that the 
central requirement of education consisted in giving 
habits of gentleness and justice; "gentleness" (as I will 
show you presently) being the best single word I could 
have used to express the capacity for giving and receiving 
true pleasure; and "justice," being similarly the most 
comprehensive word for all kind of honest dealing. 

Now, I began these letters with the purpose of explain- 
ing the nature of the requirements of justice first, and 
then those of gentleness, but I allowed myself to be led 
into that talk about the theatres, not only because the 
thoughts could be more easily written as they came, but 
also because I was able thus to illustrate for vou more 



& 



66 TIME AND TIDE. 

directly the nature of the enemy we have to deal with. 
You do not perhaps know, though I say this diffidently 
(for I often find working men know many things which 
one would have thought were out of their way), that 
music was among the Greeks, quite the first means of 
education; and that it was so connected with their 
system of ethics and of intellectural training, that the God 
of Music is with them also the God of Righteousness ; — 
the God who purges and avenges iniquity, and contends 
with their Satan as represented under the form of Python, 
" the corrupter." And the Greeks were incontrovertibly 
right in this. Music is the nearest at hand, the most 
orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, of all 
bodily pleasures ; it is also the only one which is equally 
helpful to all the ages of man, — helpful from the nurse's 
song to her infant, to the music, unheard of others, which 
often, if not most frequently, haunts the deathbed of pure 
and innocent spirits. And the action of the deceiving or 
devilish power is in nothing shown quite so distinctly 
among us at this day, — not even in our commercial dis- 
honesties, nor in our social cruelties, — as in its having 
been able to take away music, as an instrument of educa- 
tion, altogether; and to enlist it almost wholly in the 
service of superstition on the one hand, and of sensuality 
or the other. 



LETTER XI. THE GOLDEN BOTTGH. 67 

This power of the Muses, then, and its proper influ- 
ence over jour workmen, I shall eventually have much to 
insist upon with you ; and in doing so I shall take that 
beautiful parable of the Prodigal Son (which I have al- 
ready referred to), and explain as far as I know, the sig- 
nificance of it, and then I will take the three means of 
festivity, or wholesome human joy, therein stated — fine 
dress, rich food, and music ; — (" bring forth the fairest 
robe for him," — " bring forth the fatted calf, and kill it ; " 
" as he drew nigh, he heard music and dancing ; ") and I 
will show you how all these three things, fine dress, rich 
food, and music (including ultimately all the other arts) 
are meant to be sources of life, and means of moral disci- 
pline, to all men ; and how they have all three been 
made, by the Devil, the means of guilt, dissoluteness, and 
death. But first I must return to my original plan of 
these letters, and endeavour to set down for you some of 
the laws which in a true Working Men's Parliament 
must be ordained in defence of Honesty. 

Of which laws (preliminary to all others, and neces 
sary above all others), having now somewhat got my rav- 
elled threads together again, I will begin to talk in my 
next letter. 



Cetter 12. 

The necessity of Imperative Law to the Prosperity of 

States. 

March 19, 1867. 
I have your most interesting letter,* which I keep for 
reference, when I come to the consideration of its sub- 
ject in its proper place, under the head of the abuse 
of Food. I do not wonder that your life should be ren- 
dered unhappy by the scenes of drunkenness which you 
are so often compelled to witness ; nor that this so gigan- 
tic and infectious evil should seem to you the root of the 
greater part of the misery of our lower orders. I do not 
wonder that Sir Walter Trevelyan has given his best 
energy to its repression; nor even that another friend, 
George Cruikshank, has warped the entire current of his 
thoughts and life, at once to my admiration and my sor- 
row, from their natural field of work, that he might spend 
them, in struggle, for the poor lowest people whom he 
knows so well, with this fiend who grasps his victims by 
the throat first, and then by the heart. I wholly sympa- 
thise with you in indignation at the methods of tempta- 
* Appendix 4. 



LETTER Xn. DICTATORSHIP. bd 

tion employed, and at the use of the fortunes made, by the 
vendors of death; and whatever immediately applicable 
legal means there might be of restricting the causes of 
drunkenness, I should without hesitation desire to bring 
into operation. Bat all such appliance I consider tempo- 
rary and provisionary ; nor, while there is record of the 
miracle at Cana (not to speak of the sacrament) can I con- 
ceive it possible, without (logically) the denial of the 
entire truth of the New Testament, to reprobate the use 
of wine as a stimulus to the powers of life. Supposing we 
did deny the words and deeds of the Founder of Christian- 
ity, the authority of the wisest heathens, especially that of 
Plato in the Laws, is wholly against abstinence from 
wine ; and much as I can believe, and as I have been en- 
deavouring to make you believe also, of the subtlety of the 
Devil, I do not suppose the vine to have been one of his 
inventions. Of this, however, more in another place. 
By the way, was it not curious that in the Manchester 
Examiner, in which that letter of mine on the abuse of 
dancing appeared, there chanced to be in the next column 
a paragraph giving an account of a girl stabbing her 
betrayer in a ball room ; and another paragraph describ- 
ing a Parisian character, which gives exactly the extreme 
type I wanted, for exan.ple of the abuse of food? * 

* Appendix 5. 



70 TIME AOT) TIDE. 

I return, however, now to the examination of possible 
means for the enforcement of justice, in temper and ii 
act, as the first of political requirements. And as, in 
stating my conviction of the necessity of certain stringent 
laws on this matter, I shall be in direct opposition to Mr 
Stuart Mill ; and more or less in opposition to other pro- 
fessors of modern political economy, as well as to many 
honest and active promoters of the privileges of working 
men (as if privilege only were wanted, and never re- 
straint ! ), I will give you, as briefly as I can, the grounds 
on which I am prepared to justify such opposition. 

When the crew of a wrecked ship escape in an open 
boat, and the boat is crowded, the provisions scanty, and 
the prospect of making land distant, laws are instantly 
established and enforced which no one thinks of disobey- 
ing. An entire equality of claim to the provisions is 
acknowledged without dispute ; and an equal liability to 
necessary labour. No man who can row is allowed to re- 
fuse his oar; no man, however much money he may have 
saved in his pocket, is allowed so much as half a biscuit 
beyond his proper ration. Any riotous person who en- 
dangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and 
laid in the bottom of the boat, without the smallest com- 
punction for such violation of the principles of individual 
liberty ; and on the other hand, any child, or woman, 01 



LETTEit Xn. DICTATORSHIP. 71 

aged person, who was helpless, and exposed to greater 
danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive 
more # than ordinary care and indulgence, not unaccom- 
panied with unanimous self-sacrifice, on the part of the 
labouring crew. 

There is never any question, under circumstances like 
these, of what is right and wrong, worthy and unworthy, 
wise or foolish. If there be any question, there is little 
hope for boat or crew. The right man is put at the 
helm ; every available hand is set to the oars ; the sick 
are tended, and the vicious restrained, at once, and de- 
cisively ; or if not, the end is near. 

Now, the circumstances of every associated group, of 
human society, contending bravely for national honours, 
and felicity of life, differ only from those thus supposed, 
in the greater, instead of less, necessity for the establish- 
ment of restraining law. There is no point of difference 
in the difficulties to be met, nor in the rights reciprocally 
to be exercised. Yice and indolence are not less, but 
more, injurious in a nation than in a boat's company ; 
the modes in which they affect the interests of worthy 
persons being far more complex, and more easily con- 
cealed. The right of restraint, vested in those who la- 
bour, over those who would impede their labour, is as ab- 
solute in the large as in the small society; the equal 



72 TIME AND TIDE. 

claim to share in whatever is necessary to the common 
life (or commonwealth) is as indefeasible ; the claim of 
the sick and helpless to be cared for by the strong with 
earnest self-sacrifice, is as pitiful and as imperative ; the 
necessity that the governing authority should be in the 
hands of a true and trained pilot is as clear, and as con 
stant. In none of these conditions is there any difference 
between a nation and a boat's company. The only dif- 
ference is in this, that the impossibility of discerning the 
effects of individual error and crime, or of counteracting 
them by individual effort, in the affairs of a great nation, 
renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small society 
that direction by law should be sternly established. As- 
sume that your boat's crew is disorderly and licentious, 
and will, by agreement, submit to no order ; — the most 
troublesome of them will yet be easily discerned; and 
the chance is that the best man among them knocks him 
down. Common instinct of self-preservation will make 
the rioters put a good sailor at the helm, and impulsive 
pity and occasional help will be, by heart and hand, here 
and there given to visible distress. Not so in the shij 
of the realm. The most troublesome persons in it are 
usually the least recognized for such, and the most active 
in its management ; the best men mind their own busi- 
ness patiently, and are never thought of ; the good helms- 



LETTER, Xn. DICTATORSHIP. 73 

man never touches the tiller but in the last extremity ; 
and the worst forms of misery are hidden, not only frorr 
every eye, but from every thought. On the deck, the 
aspect is of Cleopatra's galley — under hatches, there is a 
slave-hospital ; while, finally (and this is the most fatal 
difference of all), even the few persons who care to inter- 
fere energetically, with purpose of doing good, can, in a 
large society, discern so little of the real state of evil to 
be dealt with, and judge so little of the best means of 
dealing with it, that half of their best efforts will be mis- 
directed, and some may even do more harm than good. 
Whereas it is the sorrowful law of this universe that 
evil, even unconscious and unintended, never fails of its 
effect ; and in a state where the evil and the good, under 
conditions of individual "liberty," are allowed to con- 
tend together, not only every stroke on the Devil's side 
tells — but every slip (the mistakes of wicked men being 
as mischievous as their successes) ; while on the side of 
right, there will be much direct and fatal defeat, and, 
even of its measures of victory, half will be fruitless. 

It is true, of course, that, in the end of ends, nothing 
but the right conquers: the prevalent thorns of wrong, 
at last, crackle away in indiscriminate flame : and of the 
good seed sown, one grain in a thousand, at last, verily 
comes up — and somebody lives by it; but most of our 



74 TIME AND TIDE. 

great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson them- 
selves, are a little too encouraging in their proclamation 
of this comfort, not, to my mind, very sufficient, when 
for the present our fields are full of nothing but nettles 
and thistles, instead of wheat ; and none of them seem to 
me yet to have enough insisted on the inevitable power 
and infectiousness of all evil, and the easy and utter 
extinguishableness of good. Medicine often fails of its 
effect — but poison never : and while, in summing the 
observation of past life, not unwatchfully spent, I can 
truly say that I have a thousand times seen patience dis- 
appointed of her hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have 
never yet seen folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice con- 
clude but in calamity. 

There is, however, one important condition in national 
economy, in which the analogy of that of a ship's com- 
pany is incomplete : namely, that while labour at oar or 
sail is necessarily united, and can attain no independent 
good, or personal profit, the labour properly undertaken 
by the several members of a political community is neces- 
sarily, and justly, within certain limits, independent ; and 
obtains for them independent advantage, of which, if you 
will glance at the last paragraph of the first essay in 
Munera Pulveris* you will see I should be the last 

* Appendix 6. 



LETTER XH. DICTATORSHIP. 75 

peison to propose depriving them. This great difference 
in final condition involves necessarily much complexity in 
the system and application of general laws ; but it in no 
wise abrogates, — on the contrary, it renders yet more 
Imperative, — the necessity for the firm ordinance of such 
laws, which, marking the due limits of independent 
agency, may enable it to exist in full energy, not only 
without becoming injurious, but so as more variously and 
perfectly to promote the entire interests of the common- 
wealth. 

I will address myself, therefore, in my next letter, tc 
the statement of some of these necessary laws. 



Cetter 13. 

The Proper Offices of the Bishop and Duke / or y 
"Overseer" and "Leader" 

Jfarofc21,1867. 
I see, by jour last letter, for which I heartily thank 
you, that you would not sympathise with me in my sor- 
row for the desertion of his own work by George Cruik- 
shank, that he may fight in the front of the temperance 
ranks. But you do not know what work he has left un- 
done, nor how much richer inheritance you might have 
received from his hand. It was no more his business to 
etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this 
moment to be writing these letters against anarchy. It is 
" the first mild day of March " (high time, I think, that 
it should be !), and by rights I ought to be out among the 
budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn, 
and clusters of primrose. This is my right work ; and it 
is not, in the inner gist and truth of it, right nor good, for 
you, or for anybody else, that Cruikshank with his great 
gift, and I with my weak, but yet thoroughly clear and 
definite one, should both of us be tormented by agony of 



LETTER Xin. EPISCOPACY AND DUKEDOM. 77 

indignation and compassion, till we are forced to give up 
our peace, and pleasure, and power ; and rush down into 
the streets and lanes of the city, to do the little that is in 
the strength of our single hands against their uncleanli- 
ness and iniquity. But, as in a sorely besieged town, 
every man must to the ramparts, whatsoever business he 
leaves, so neither he nor I have had any choice but to 
leave our household stuff, and go on crusade, such as we 
are called to ; not that I mean, if Fate may be anywise 
resisted, to give up the strength of my life, as he has 
given his ; for .1 think he was wrong in doing so ; and 
that he should only have carried the fiery cross his ap- 
pointed leagues, and then given it to another hand : and, 
for my own part, I mean these very letters to close my 
political work for many a day ; and I write them, not 
in any hope of their being at present listened to, but to 
disburden my heart of the witness I have to bear, that I 
may be free to go back to my garden lawns, and paint 
birds and flowers there. 

For these same statutes which we are to consider to- 
day, have indeed been in my mind now these fourteen 
years, ever since I wrote the last volume of the Stones of 
Venice, in which you will find, in the long note on Mod- 
ern Education (p. 212), most of what I have been now in 
detail writing to you, hinted in abstract ; and, at the 



78 TIME AJtfD TIDE. 

close of it, this sentence, of which I solemnly now avouch 
(in thankfulness that I was permitted to write it), every 
word : — " Finally, I hold it for indisputable, that the first 
duty of a state is to see that every child born therein 
shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it 
attain years of discretion. But in order to the effecting 
this the Government must have an authority over the 
people of which we now do not so much as dream." 

That authority I did not then endeavour to define, for I 
knew all such assertions would be useless, and that the 
necessarily resultant outcry w T ould merely diminish my 
influence in other directions. But now I do not care 
about influence any more, it being only my concern to 
say truly that which I know, and, if it may be, get some 
quiet life, yet, among the fields in the evening shadow. 

There is, I suppose, no word which men are prouder of 
the right to attach to their names, or more envious of 
others who bear it, when they themselves may not, than 
the word "noble." Do you know what it originally 
meant, and always, in the right use of it, means? It 
means a " known " person ; one who has risen far enough 
above others to draw men's eyes to him, and to be known 
(honorably) for such and such an one. " Ignoble," on the 
other hand, is derived from the same root as the word 
"ignorance." It means an unknown, inglorious person. 



LETTER Xm. EPISCOPACY AND DUKEDOM. 79 

And no more singular follies have been committed bv 
weak human creatures than those which have been 
caused by the instinct, pure and simple, of escaping from 
this obscurity. Instinct, which, corrupted, will hesitate 
at no means, good or evil, of satisfying itself with noto- 
riety — instinct, nevertheless, which, like all other natural 
ones, has a true and pure purpose, and ought always in a 
worthy way to be satisfied. 

All men ought to be in this sense " noble ; " known of 
each other, and desiring to be known. And the first law 
which a nation, desiring to conquer all the devices of the 
Father of Lies, should establish among its people, is that 
they shall be so known. 

Will you please now read the forty-fifth and forty-sixth 
pages of Sesame and Lilies.* The reviewers in the eccle- 
siastical journals laughed at them, as a rhapsody, when 
the book came out ; none having the slighest notion of 
what I meant (nor, indeed, do I well see how it could 
be otherwise !). Nevertheless, I meant precisely and 
literally what is there said, namely, that a bishop's duty 
being to watch over the souls of his people, and give 
account of every one of them, it becomes practically 
necessary for him first to give some account of their bodies, 
Which he was wont to do in the early days of Christi 

* Appendix 7. 



80 TIME AJSD TIDE. 

anity by help of a person called " deacon " or " minister- 
ing servant," whose name is still retained among pre- 
liminary ecclesiastical dignities, vainly enough ! Putting, 
however, all question of forms and names aside, the thing 
actually needing to be done is this — that over every 
hundred (or' some not much greater number) of the 
families composing a Christian State, there should be ap- 
pointed an overseer, or bishop, to render account, to the 
State, of the life of every individual in those families ; 
and to have care both of their interest and conduct to 
such an extent as they may be willing to admit, or as 
their faults may justify ; so that it may be impossible for 
any person, however humble, to suffer from unknown 
want, or live in unrecognised crime ; — such help and 
observance being rendered without officiousness either 
of interference or inquisition (the limits of both being 
determined by national law), but with the patient and 
gentle watchfulness which true Christian pastors now 
exercise over their flocks ; only with a higher legal au- 
thority, presently to be defined, of interference on due 
occasion. 

And with this farther function, that such overseers 
shall be not only the pastors, but the biographers, of their 
people ; a written statement of the principal events in the 
life of each family being annually required to be rendered 



LETTER Xm. EPISCOPACY AND DUKEDOM. SI 

by thern to a superior State officer. These records, laid 
up in public offices, would soon furnish indications of the 
families whom it would be advantageous to the nation to 
advance in position, or distinguish with honour, and aid 
by such reward as it should be the object of every Gov- 
ernment to distribute no less punctually, and far more 
frankly, than it distributes punishment (compare Mu- 
nera Pulveris, Essay IV., in paragraph on Critic Law), 
while the mere fact of permanent record being kept of 
every event of importance, whether disgraceful or worthy 
of praise, in each family, would of itself be a deterrent 
from crime, and a stimulant to well-deserving conduct, far 
beyond mere punishment or reward. 

Nor need you think that there would be anything in 
such a system un-English, or tending to espionage. "No 
uninvited visits should ever be made in any house, unless 
law had been violated ; nothing recorded, against its 
will, of any family, but what was inevitably known of 
its publicly visible conduct, and the results of that con- 
duct. What else was written should be only by the 
desire, and from the communications, of its head. And 
in a little while it would come to be felt that the true 
history of a nation was indeed not of its wars, but of its 
households; and the desire of men would rather be to 
obtain some conspicuous place in these honourable 

4* 



82 TIME AND TIDE. 

annals, than to shrink behind closed shutters from pub- 
lic sight. Until at last, George Herbert's grand word 
of command would hold not only on the conscience, but 
the actual system and outer economy of life, 

"Think the King sees thee still, for his King does." 

Secondly, above these bishops or pastors, who are only 
to be occupied in offices of familiar supervision and help, 
should be appointed higher officers of State, having 
executive authority over as large districts as might be 
conveniently (according to the number and circumstances 
of their inhabitants) committed to their care; officers, 
who, according to the reports of the pastors, should 
enforce or mitigate the operation of too rigid general 
law, and determine measures exceptionally necessary 
for public advantage. For instance, the general law 
being that all children of the operative classes, at a cer- 
tain age, should be sent to public schools, these superior 
officers should have power, on the report of the pastors, 
to dispense with the attendance of children who had 
sick parents to take charge of, or whose home-life seemed 
to be one of better advantage for them than that of the 
common schools ; or who for any other like cause might 
justifiably claim remission. And it being the general 
law that the entire body of the public should contribute 



LETTER XIII. EPISCOPACY ANT) DUKEDOM. 83 

to the cost, and divide the profits, of all necessary public 
works and undertakings, as roads, mines, harbour pro 
tections, and the like, and that nothing of this kind 
should be permitted to be in the hands of private specu- 
lators, it should be the duty of the district officer to col- 
lect whatever information was accessible respecting such 
sources of public profit ; and to represent the circum- 
stances in Parliament : and then, with parliamentary 
authority, but on his own sole personal responsibility, 
to see that such enterprises were conducted honestly, 
and with due energy and order. 

The appointment to both these offices should be by 
election, and for life ; by what forms of election shall be 
matter of inquiry, after we have determined some others 
of the necessary constitutional laws. 

I do not doubt but that you are already beginning to 
think it was with good reason I held my peace these 
fourteen years, — and that, for any good likely to be done 
by speaking, I might as well have held it altogether ! 

It may be so : but merely to complete and explain 
my own work, it is necessary that I should say these 
things finally; and I believe that the imminent danger 
to which we are now in England exposed by the gradu- 
ally accelerated fall of our aristocracy (wholly their own 
fault), and the substitution of money-power for their 



84 TIME AND TIDE. 

martial one; and by the correspondent^ imminent prev 
alence of mob-violence here, as in America ; together 
with the continually increasing chances of insane war, 
founded on popular passion, whether of pride, fear, or 
acquisitiveness, — all these dangers being further dark- 
ened and degraded by the monstrous forms of vice and 
selfishness which the appliances of recent wealth, and 
of vulgar mechanical art, make possible to the million, — 
will soon bring us into a condition in which men will be 
glad to listen to almost any words but those of a dema- 
gogue, and to seek any means of safety rather than those 
in which they have lately trusted. So, with your good 
leave, I will say my say to the end, mock at it who 
may. 

P.S. — I take due note of the regulations of trade pro- 
posed in your letter just received * — all excellent. I 
shall come to them presently, u Cash payment " above 
all. You may write that on your trade-banners in let- 
ters of gold, wherever you would have them raised 

victoriously. 

* Appendix 8. 



fetter 14. 

The First Group of Essential Laios. — Against Theft by 
False Work, and by Bankruptcy. — Necessary Public- 
ity of Accounts. 

March 26, 1867. 
I feel much inclined to pause at this point, to answer 
the kind of questions and objections which I-know must 
be rising in your mind, respecting the authority supposed 
to be lodged in the persons of the officers just specified. 
But I can neither define, nor justify to you, the powers I 
would desire to see given to them, till I state to you the 
kind of laws they would have to enforce : of which the 
first group should be directed to the prevention of all 
kinds of thieving ; but chiefly of the occult and polite 
methods of it ; and, of all occult methods, chiefly, the 
making and selling of bad goods. !No form of theft is so 
criminal as this — none so deadly to the State. If you 
break into a man's house and steal a hundred pounds' 
worth of plate, he knows his loss, and there is an end 
(besides that you take your risk of punishment for youi 



86 TIME A^D TIDE. 

gain, like a man). And if yon do it bravely and openly, 
and habitually live by sueh inroad, yon may retain nearly 
every moral and manly virtue, and become a heroic rider 
and reiver, and hero of song. But if you swindle me out 
of twenty shillings'-worth of quality, on each of a hun- 
dred bargains, I lose my hundred pounds all the same, 
and I get a hundred untrustworthy articles besides, which 
will fail me and injure me in all manner of ways, when 
I least expect it ; and you, having done your thieving 
basely, are corrupted by the guilt of it to the very heart's 
core. 

This is the first thing, therefore, which your general 
laws must be set to punish, fiercely, immitigably, to the 
utter prevention and extinction of it, or there is no hope 
for you. No religion that ever was preached on this 
earth of God's rounding, ever proclaimed any salvation 
to sellers of bad goods. If the Ghost that is in you, 
whatever the essence of it, leaves your hand a juggler's, 
and your heart a cheat's, it is not a Holy Ghost, be 
assured of that. And for the rest, all political economy, 
as well as all higher virtue, depends first on sound work. 

Let your laws then, I say, in the beginning, be set to 
secure this. You cannot make punishment too stern for 
subtle knavery. Keep no truce with this enemy, what- 
ever pardon you extend to more generous ones. For 



LETTER XrV. TRADE- WARRANT. 87 

light weights and false measures, or for proved adultera- 
tion or dishonest manufacture of article, the penalty 
should be simply confiscation of goods and sending out 
of the country. The kind of person who desires prosper- 
ity by such practices, could not be made to " emigrate *' 
too speedily. What to do with him in the place you ap- 
pointed to be blessed by his presence, we will in time 
consider. 

Under such penalty, however, and yet more under the 
pressure of such a right public opinion as could pro- 
nounce and enforce such penalty, I imagine that sham 
articles would become speedily as rare as sound ones are 
now. The chief difficulty in the matter would be to 
fix your standard. This would have to be done by the 
guild of every trade in its own manner, and within cer- 
tain easily recognizable limits ; and this fixing of standard 
would necessitate much simplicity in the forms and kinds 
of articles sold. You could only warrant a certain kind 
of glazing or painting in china, a certain quality of leath- 
er or cloth, bricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined 
mixture of meal. Advisable improvements or varieties 
in manufacture would have to be examined and accepted 
by the trade guild : when so accepted, they would be an- 
nounced in public reports; and all puffery and self-procla- 
mation, on the part of tradesmen, absolutely forbidden, 



88 TIME AND TIDE. 

as much as the making of any other kind of noise or dis 
turbance. 

But observe, this law is only to have force over trades- 
men whom I suppose to have joined voluntarily in carry- 
ing out a better system of commerce. Outside of their 
guild, they would have to leave the rogue to puff and 
cheat as he chose, and the public to be gulled as they 
chose. All that is necessary is that the said public 
should clearly know the shops in which they could get 
warranted articles ; and, as clearly, those in which they 
bought at their own risk. 

And the above-named penalty of confiscation of goods 
should of course be enforced only against dishonest mem- 
bers of the trade guild. If people chose to buy of those 
who had openly refused to join an honest society, they 
should be permitted to do so at their pleasure and peril : 
and this for two reasons ; the first, that it is always 
necessary, in enacting strict law, to leave some safety 
valve for outlet of irrepressible vice (nearly all the stern 
lawgivers of old time erred by oversight in this; so that 
the morbid elements of the State, which it should be 
allowed to get rid of in a cutaneous and openly curable 
manner, were thrown inwards, and corrupted its constitu- 
tion, and broke all down) ; the second, that operations oi 
trade and manufacture conducted under and guarded by 



LETTER XTV. TRADE-WARRANT. 89 

severe law, ought always to be subject to the stimulus of 
such erratic external ingenuity as cannot be tested by 
law, or would be hindered from its full exercise by the 
dread of it ; not to speak of the farther need of extending 
all -possible indulgence to foreign traders who might wish 
to exercise their industries here without liability to the 
surveillance of our trade guilds. 

Farther, while for all articles warranted by the guild 
(as above supposed) the prices should be annually fixed 
for the trade throughout the kingdom ; and the producing 
workmen's wages fixed, so as to define the master's profits 
within limits admitting only such variation as the nature 
of the given article of sale rendered inevitable; — yet, in 
the production of other classes of articles, whether by 
skill of applied handicraft, or fineness of material above 
the standard of the guild, attaining, necessarily, values 
above its assigned prices, every firm should be left free to 
make its own independent efforts and arrangements with 
its workmen, subject always to the same penalty, if it 
could be proved to have consistently described or offered 
anything to the public for what it was not : and finally, 
the state of the affairs of every firm should be annually 
reported to the guild, and its books laid open to inspec- 
tion, for guidance in the regulation of prices in the subse- 
quent year ; and any firm whose liabilities exceeded its 



90 TIME AND TIDE. 

assets by a hundred pounds should be forthwith declared 
bankrupt. And I will anticipate what I have to say in 
succeeding letters so far as to tell you that I would have 
this condition extend to every firm in the country, large 
or small, and of whatever rank in business. And thus 
you perceive, my friend, I shall not have to trouble you 
or myself much with deliberations respecting commercial 
"panics," nor to propose legislative cures for them, by 
any laxatives or purgatives of paper currency, or any 
other change of pecuniary diet. 



Cetter 15. 

The Nature of Theft by Unjust Profits. — Crime can 
finally be arrested only by Education. 

29 th March. 

The first methods of polite robbery, by dishonest 
manufacture, and by debt, of which we have been hith- 
erto speaking, are easily enough to be dealt with and 
ended, when once men have a mind to end them. But 
the third method of polite robbery, by dishonest acquisi- 
tion, has many branches, and is involved among honest 
arts of acquisition, so that it is difficult to repress the one 
without restraining the other. 

Observe, first, large fortunes cannot honestly be made 
by the work of one man's hands or head. If his work 
benefits multitudes, and involves position of high trust, 
it may be (I do not say that it is) expedient to reward 
him with great wealth or estate ; but fortune of this kind 
is freely given in gratitude for benefit, not as repayment 
for labour. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, it 
the public can enjoy the product of their genius, may set 



92 TIME AND TIDE. 

it at almost any price they choose ; but this, I will show 
you when I come to speak of art, is unlawful on their 
part, and ruinous to their own powers. Genius must not 
be sold ; the sale of it involves, in a transcendental, but 
perfectly true sense, the guilt both of simony and prosti- 
tution Your labour only may be sold ; your soul must 
not, 

Now, by fair pay for fair labour, according to the rank 
of it, a man can obtain means of comfortable, or if he 
needs it, refined life. But he cannot obtain large fortune. 
Such fortunes as are now the prizes of commerce can be 
made only in one of three ways : — 

1. By obtaining command over the labour of multi- 
tudes of other men, and taxing it for our own profit. 

2. By treasure-trove, — as of mines, useful vegetable 
products, and the like, — in circumstances putting them 
under our own exclusive control. 

3. By speculation (commercial gambling). 

The two first of these means of obtaining riches are, 
in some forms and within certain limits, lawful, and 
advantageous to the State. The third is entirely det- 
rimental to it ; for in ad cases of profit derived from 
speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses ; 
and the net result to the State is zero (pecuniarily), with 
the loss of the time and ingenuity spent in the transac- 



LETTER XV. PER-CENTAGE. 93 

tion ; besides the disadvantage involved in the discour- 
agement of the losing party, and the corrupted moral 
natures of both. This is the result of speculation at its 
best. At its worst, not only B. loses what A. gains 
(having taken his fair risk of such loss for his fair chance 
of gain), but C. and D., who never had any chance at 
all, are drawn in by B.'s fall, and the final result is 
that A. sets up his carriage on the collected sum which 
was once the means of living to a dozen families. 

ISTor is this all. For while real commerce is founded 
on real necessities or uses, and limited by these, specula- 
tion, of which the object is merely gain, seeks to excite 
imaginary necessities and popular desires, in order to 
gather its temporary profit from the supply of them. So 
that not only the persons who lend their money to it will 
be finally robbed, but the work done with their money 
will be for the most part useless, and thus the entire body 
of the public injured as well as the persons concerned in 
the transaction. Take, for instance, the architectural 
decorations of railways throughout the kingdom, — repre- 
senting many millions of money for which no farthing of 
dividend can ever be forthcoming. The public will not 
be induced to pay the smallest fraction of higher fare to 
Rochester or Dover - because the ironwork of the bridge 
which carries them over the Thames is covered with floral 



94 TIME AND TIDE. 

cockades, and the piers of it edged with ornamental 
cornices. All that work is simply put there by the 
builders that they may put the per-centage upon it into 
their own pockets ; and, the rest of the money being 
thrown into that floral form, there is an end of it, as far 
as the shareholders are concerned. Millions upon mil- 
lions have thus been spent, within the last twenty years, 
on ornamental arrangements of zigzag bricks, black and 
blue tiles, cast-iron foliage, and the like ; of which mil- 
lions, as I said, not a penny can ever return into the 
shareholders' pockets, nor contribute to public speed or 
safety on the line. It is all sunk forever in ornamental 
architecture, and (trust me for this !) all that architecture 
is bad. As such, it had incomparably better not have 
been built. Its only result will be to corrupt what 
capacity of taste or right pleasure in such work we have 
yet left to us ! And consider a little, what other kind of 
result than that might have been attained if all those 
millions had been spent usefully : say, in buying land for 
the people, or building good houses for them, or (if it had 
been imperatively required to be spent decoratively) in 
laying out gardens and parks for them, — or buying noble 
works of art for their permanent possession, — or, best of 
all, establishing frequent public schools and libraries! 
Count what those lost millions would have so accom- 



LETTER XV. PER-CENTAGE. 95 

plislied for you ! But you left the affair to " supply and 
demand," and the British public had not brains enough to 
" demand " land, or lodging, or books. It " demanded " 
cast-iron cockades and zigzag cornices, and is "supplied'* 
with them, to its beatitude for ever more. 

]STow, the theft we first spoke of, by falsity of work- 
manship or material, is, indeed, so far worse than these 
thefts by dishonest acquisition, that there is no possible 
excuse for it on the ground of self-deception ; while many 
speculative thefts are committed by persons who really 
mean to do no harm, but think the system on the whole 
a fair one, and do the best they can in it for themselves. 
But in the real fact of the crime, when consciously 
committed, in the numbers reached by its injury, in the 
degree of suffering it causes to those whom it ruins, in 
the baseness of its calculated betrayal of implicit trust,in 
the yet more perfect vileness of the obtaining such trust 
by misrepresentation, only that it may be betrayed, and 
in the impossibility that the crime should be at all com- 
mitted, except by persons of good position and large 
knowledge of the world, — w T hat manner of theft is so 
wholly unpardonable, so inhuman, so contrary to every 
law and instinct which binds or animates society ? 

And then consider farther, how many of the carriages 
that glitter in our streets are driven, and how many of 



96 TIME AND TIDE. 

the stately houses that gleam among our English fields 
are inhabited by this kind of thief! 

I happened to be reading this morning (29th March) 
some portions of the Lent services, and I came to a pause 
over the familiar words, " And with Him they crucified 
two thieves." Have you ever considered (I speak to you 
now as a professing Christian), why, in the accomplish- 
ment of the " numbering among transgressors," the trans- 
gressors chosen should have been especially thieves — not 
murderers, nor, as far as we know, sinners by any gross 
violence ? Do you observe how the sin of theft is again 
and again indicated as the chiefly antagonistic one to the 
law of Christ ? " This he said, not that he cared for 
the poor, but because he was a thief, and had the 
bag" (of Judas). And again, though Barabbas was a 
leader of sedition, and a murderer besides — (that the 
popular election might be in all respects perfect) — yet St. 
John, in curt and conclusive account of him, fastens again 
on the theft. " Then cried they all again saying, Not this 
man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber." I 
believe myself the reason to be that theft is indeed, in its 
subtle forms, the most complete and excuseless of human 
crimes. Sins of violence usually have passion to excuse 
them : they may be the madness of moments ; or they 
may be apparently the only means of extrication from 



LETTER XV. PEK-CENTAGE. 97 

calamity. In other cases, they are the diseased habits of 
lower and brutified natures. But theft involving delibera- 
tive intellect, and absence of passion, is the purest type 
of wilful iniquity, in persons capable of doing right. 
Which being so, it seems to be fast becoming the practice 
of modern society to crucify its Christ indeed, as will- 
ingly as ever, in the persons of His poor; but by no 
means now to crucify its thieves beside Him! It ele- 
vates its thieves after another fashion ; sets them upon an 
hill, that their light may shine before men, and that all 
may see their good works, and glorify their Father, in — 
the Opposite of Heaven. 

I think your trade parliament will have to put an end 
to this kind of business somehow ! But it eahnot be 
done by laws merely, where the interests and circum- 
stances are so extended and complex. Nay, even as 
regards lower and more defined crimes, the assigned 
punishment is not to be thought of as a preventive 
means ; but onlj- as the seal of opinion set by society on 
the fact. Crime cannot be hindered by punishment ; it 
will always find some shape and outlet, unpunishable or 
unclosed. Crime can only be truly hindered by letting 
no man grow up a criminal — by taking away the will 
to commit sin ; not by mere punishment of its com- 
mission. Crime, small and ^reat, can only be truly stayed 

5 



98 TIME AND TIDE. 

by education — not the education of the intellect only, 
which is, on some men, wasted, and for others mischie- 
vous ; but education of the heart, which is alike good and 
necessary for all. So, on this matter, I will try to say 
one or two things of which the silence has kept my own 
heart heavy this many a day, in my next letter. 



Cetter 16. 

Of Public Education irrespective of Glass-distinction, — 
It consists essentially in giving Habits of Mercy, and 
Habits of Truth. 

March 30, 1867. 
Thank you for sending me the pamphlet containing 
the account of the meeting of clergy and workmen, 
and of the reasonings which there took place. I cannot 
promise you that I shall read much of them, for the 
question to my mind most requiring discussion and 
explanation is not, why workmen don't go to church, 
but — why other people do. However, this I know, 
that if, among our many spiritual teachers, there are 
indeed any who heartily and literally believe that the 
wisdom they have to teach, " is more precious than 
rubies, and all the things thou canst desire are not to 
be compared unto her," and if, so believing, they will 
further dare to affront their congregations by the asser- 
tion ; and plainly tell them they are not to hunt for 
rubies or gold any more, at their peril, till they have 
gained that which cannot be gotten for gold, nor silver 



100 TIME AND TIDE. 

weighed for the price thereof, — such believers, so preach- 
ing, and refusing to preach otherwise till they are m 
that attended to, will never want congregations, both of 
working men, and every other kind of men. 

Did you ever hear of anything else so ill-named as 
the phantom called the " Philosophers " Stone? A 
talisman that shall turn base metal into precious metal, 
nature acknowledges not; nor would any but fools 
seek after it. But a talisman to turn base souls into 
noble souls, nature has given us ! and that is a " Philo- 
sopher's" Stone indeed, but it is a stone which the 
builders refuse. 

If there were two valleys in California or Australia, 
with two different kinds of gravel in the bottom of 
them ; and in the one stream bed you could dig up, 
occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of gold ; and 
in the other stream bed, certainly and without hazard, 
you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans 
which gave length of days and peace; and alabaster 
vases of precious balms, which were better than the 
Arabian Dervish's ointment, and made not only the 
eyes to see, but the mind to know, whatever it would 
— I wonder in which of the stream beds there would 
be most diggers? 

" Time is money ?1 — .so say j^our practised merchants 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 101 

and economists. Kone of them, however, I fancy, as 
they draw towards death, find that the reverse is true 
and that " money is time " % Perhaps it might be better 
for them in the end if they did not turn so much of 
their time into money, as no re- transformation is possible i 
There are other things, however, which in the same 
sense are money, or can be changed into it, as well 
as time. Health is money, wit is money, knowledge is 
money; and all your health, and wit, and knowledge 
may be changed for gold ; and the happy goal so reached, 
of a sick, insane, and blind, auriferous old age ; but 
the gold cannot be changed in its turn back into health 
and wit. 

" Time is money," the words tingle in my ears so that 
I can't go on writing. Is it nothing better, then ? If we 
could thoroughly understand that time was — itself, — 
would it not be more to the purpose ? A thing of which 
loss or gain was absolute loss, and perfect gain. And 
that it was expedient also to buy health and knowledge 
with money, if so purchaseable ; but not to buy money 
with them f 

And purchaseable they are, at the beginning of life, 
though not at its close. Purchaseable, always, for others, 
if not for ourselves. You can buy, and cheaply, life, 
endless life, according to your Christian's creed — (there's 



102 TIME AND TIDE. 

a bargain for you!) but — long years of knowledge, and 
peace, and power, and happiness of love — these assuredly, 
and irrespectively of any creed or question — for all those 
desolate and haggard children about your streets. 

" That is not political economy, however." Pardon 
me ; the all-comfortable saying, " What he layeth out, it 
shall be paid him again," is quite literally true in matters 
of education ; no money-seed can be sown with so sure 
and large return at harvest-time as that; only of this 
money-seed, more than of flesh-seed, it is utterly true, 
" That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die." 
You must forget your money, and every other material 
interest, and educate for education's sake only ! or the 
very good you try to bestow will become venomous, and 
that and your money will be lost together. 

And this has been the real cause of failure in our efforts 
for education hitherto — whether from above or below. 
There is no honest desire for the thing itself. The cry 
for it among the lower orders is because they think that, 
when once they have got it, they must become upper 
orders. There is a strange notion in the mob's mind, 
now-a-days (including all our popular economists and 
educators, as we most justly may, under that brief term, 
" mob "), that everybody can be uppermost ; or at least, 
that a state of general scramble, in which everybody in 



LETTER XYI. EDUCATION. 103 

his turn should come to the top, is a proper Utopian con- 
stitution ; and that, once give every lad a good education, 
and he cannot but come to ride in his carriage (the 
methods of supply of coachmen and footmen not being 
contemplated). And very sternly I say to you — and 
say from sure knowledge — that a man had better not 
know how to read or write, than receive education on 
such terms. 

The first condition under which it can be given use- 
fully is, that it should be clearly understood to be no 
means of getting on in the world, but a means of staying 
pleasantly in your place there. And the first elements 
of State education should be calculated equally for the 
advantage of every order of person composing the State. 
From the lowest to the highest class, every child born in 
this island should be required by law to receive these 
general elements of human discipline, and to be baptized 
— not with a drop of water on its forehead — but in the 
cloud and sea of heavenly wisdom and of earthly power. 

And the elements of this general State education 
should be briefly these : 

First. — The body must be made as beautiful and per- 
fect in its youth as it can be, wholly irrespective of 
ulterior purpose. If you mean afterwards to set the 
creature to business which will degrade its body and 



104 TIME AND TIDE. 

shorten its life, first, I should say, simply, — you had bet- 
ter let such business alone; — but if you must have it 
done, somehow, yet let the living creature whom you 
mean to kill, get the full strength of its body first, and 
taste the joy, and bear the beauty of youth. After that, 
poison it, if you will. Economically, the arrangement is 
a wiser one, for it will take longer in the killing than if 
you began with it younger ; and you will get an excess 
of work out of it which will more than pay for its train- 
ing. 

Therefore, first teach — as I said in the preface to Unto 
this Last — " The Laws of Health, and exercises enjoined 
by them ; " and to this end your schools must be in fresh 
country, and amidst fresh air, and have great extents of 
land attached to them in permanentlestate. Riding, run- 
ning, all the honest personal exercises of offence and 
defence, and music, should be the primal heads of this 
bodily education. 

Xext to these bodily accomplishments, the two great 
mental graces should be taught, Reverence and Compas- 
sion : not that these are in a literal sense to be " taught,' 7 
for they are innate in every well-born human creature, 
but they have to be developed, exactly as the strength of 
the body must be, by deliberate and constant exercise. I 
never understood why Goethe (in the plan of education 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 105 

in Wilhehn Meister) says that reverence is not innate, 
but must be taught from without ; it seems to me so 
fixedly a function of the human spirit, that if men can 
get nothing else to reverence they will worship a fool, or 
a stone, or a vegetable." But to teach reverence rightly 
is to attach it to the right persons and things ; first, by 
setting over your youth masters whom they cannot but 
love and respect ; next, by gathering for them, out of 
past history, whatever has been most worthy, in human 
deeds and human passion ; and leading them continually 
to dwell upon such instances, making this the principal 
element of emotional excitement to them ; and, lastly, by 
letting them justly feel, as far as may be, the smallness 
of their own powers and knowledge, as compared with 
the attainments of others. 

Compassion, on the other hand, is to be taught chiefly 
by making it a point of honour, collaterally with courage, 
and in the same rank (as indeed the complement ;;nd 
evidence of courage), so that, in the code of unwritten 
school law, it shall be held as shameful to have done a 
cruel thing as a cowardly one. All infliction of pain on 
weaker creatures is to be stigmatized as unmanly crime ; 

* By steadily preaching against it, one may quench, reverence, 
and bring insolence to its height ; but the instinct cannot be wholly 

uprooted. 

5* 



106 TIME AND TIDE. 

and every possible opportunity taken to exercise the 
youths in offices of some practical help, and to acquaint 
them with the realities of the distress which, in the joy- 
fulness of entering into life, it is so difficult for those 
w ho have not seen home suffering, to conceive. 

Reverence, then, and compassion, we are to teach pri- 
marily, and with these, as the bond and guardian of 
them, truth of spirit and word, of thought and sight. 
Truth, earnest and passionate, sought for like a treasure 
and kept like a crown. 

This teaching of truth as a habit will be the chief 
work the master has to do ; and it will enter into all parts 
of education. First, you must accustom the children to 
close accuracy of statement ; this both as a principle of 
honour, and as an accomplishment of language, making 
them try always who shall speak truest, both as regards 
the fact he has to relate or express (not concealing or 
exaggerating), and as regards the precision of the words 
he expresses it in, thus making truth (which, indeed, it 
is) the test of perfect language, and giving the intensity 
of a moral purpose to the study and art of words : then 
carrying this accuracy into all habits of thought and 
observation also, so as always to think of things as they 
truly are, and to see them as they truly are, as far as in 
us rests. And it does rest much in our power, for al? 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 107 

false thoughts and seeings come mainly of our thinking 
of what we have no business with, and looking for things 
we want to see, instead of things that ought to be seen. 

" Do not talk but of what you know ; do not think 
but of what you have materials to think justly upon ; 
and do not look for things only that you like, when there 
are others to be seen " — this is the lesson to be taught to 
our youth, and inbred in them ; and that mainly by our 
own example and continence. Never teach a child any- 
thing of which you are not yourself sure ; and, above all, 
if you feel anxious to force anything into its mind in 
tender years, that the virtue of youth and early associa- 
tion may fasten it there, be sure it is no lie which you 
thus sanctify. There is always more to be taught of 
absolute, incontrovertible knowledge, open to its capacity, 
than any child can learn ; there is no need to teach it 
anything doubtful. Better that it should be ignorant of 
a thousand truths, than have consecrated in its heart a 
single lie. 

And for this, as well as for many other reasons, the 
principal subjects of education, after history, ought to be 
natural science and mathematics ; but with respect to 
these studies, your schools will require to be divided into 
three groups ; one for children who will probably have to 
live in cities, one for those who will live in the country, 



108 TIME AND TIDE. 

and one for those who will live at sea; the schools foi 
these last, of course, being always placed on the coast. 
And for children whose life is to be in cities, the subjects 
of study should be, as far as their disposition will allow 
of it, mathematics and the arts ; for children who are to 
'ive in the country, natural history of birds, insects, and 
plants, together with agriculture taught practically ; and 
for children who are to be seamen, physical geography, 
astronomy, and the natural history of sea fish and sea 
birds. 

This, then, being the general course and material of 
education for all children, observe farther that in the 
preface to Unto this Last I said that every child, besides 
passing through this course, was at school to learn " the 
calling by which it was to live.-' And it may perhaps 
appear to you that after, or even in the early stages of 
education such as this above described, there are many 
callings which, however much called to them, the chil- 
dren might not willingly determine to learn or live by. 
" Probably," you may say, " after they have learned to 
ride, and fence, and sing, and know birds and flowers, it 
will be little to their liking to make themselves into tai- 
lors, carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and the like." 
And I cannot but agree with you as to the exceeding 
probability of some such reluctance on their part, which 



LETTER XVI. EDUCATION. 109 

will be a very awkward state of things indeed (since we 
can by no means get on without tailoring and shoemak- 
ing), and one to be meditated upon very seriously in next 
letter. 

P.S. — Thank you for sending me your friend's letter 
about Grustave Dore ; he is wrong, however, in thinking 
there is any good in those illustrations of Elaine. I had 
intended to speak of them afterwards, for it is to my 
mind quite as significant — almost as awful — a sign of 
what is going on in the midst of us, that our great Eng- 
lish poet should have suffered his work to be thus con- 
taminated, as that the lower Evangelicals, never notable 
for sense in the arts, should have got their Bibles dishon- 
oured. Those Elaine illustrations are just as impure as 
anything else that Dore has done ; but they are also 
vapid, and without any one merit whatever in point of 
art. The illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques are full 
of power and invention; but those to Elaine are merely 
and simply stupid; theatrical be'tises, w T ith the taint of 
the charnel-house on them besides. 



Ccttcr 17. 

The Relations of Education to Position in Life. 

April 3, 1867. 
I am not quite sure that you will feel the awkwardness 

of the dilemma I got into at the end of last letter, as 
much as I do myself. You working men have been 
crowing and peacocking at such a rate lately ; and set- 
ting yourselves forth so confidently for the cream of 
society, and the top of the world, that perhaps you will 
not anticipate any of the difficulties which suggest them- 
selves to a thorough-bred Tory and Conservative, like me. 
Perhaps you will expect a youth properly educated — a 
good rider — musician — and well-grounded scholar in nat- 
ural philosophy, to think it a step of promotion when he 
has to go and be made a tailor of, or a coalheaver ? If 
you do, I should very willingly admit that you might be 
right, and go on to the farther development of my notions 
w ithout pausing at this stumbling-block, were it not that, 
unluckily, all the wisest men whose sayings I ever heard 
or read, agree in expressing (one way or another) just 



LETTER XVII.— DIFFICULTIES. Ill 

such contempt, for those useful occupations, as I dread 
on the part of my foolishly refined scholars. Shakspeare 
and Chaucer, — Dante and Yirgil, — Horace and Pindar, — 
Homer, ^Eschylus, and Plato, — all the men of any age or 
country who seem to have had Heaven's music on then 
lips, agree in their scorn of mechanic life. And I imagine 
that the feeling of prudent Englishmen, and sensible as 
well as sensitive Englishwomen, on reading my last letter 
- — would mostly be — " Is the man mad, or laughing at us, 
to propose educating the working classes this way ? He 
could not, if his wild schgme were possible, find a better 
method of making them acutely wretched." 

It may be so, my sensible and polite friends ; and I am 
heartily willing, as well as curious, to hear you develope 
your own scheme of operative education, so only that 
it be universal, orderly, and careful. I do not say that I 
shall be prepared to advocate my athletics and philos- 
ophies instead. Only, observe what you admit, or imply, 
in bringing forward your possibly wiser system. You 
imply that a certain portion of mankind must be em- 
ployed in degrading work ; and that, to fit them for this 
work, it is necessary to limit their knowledge, their active 
powers, and their enjoyments, from childhood upwards, 
so that they may not be able to conceive of any state 
better than the one they were born in, nor possess any 



112 TTME AND TIDE. 

knowledge or acquirements inconsistent with the coarse- 
ness, or disturbing the monotony, of their vulgar occupa- 
tion. And by their labour in this contracted state of mind, 
we superior beings are to be maintained ; and always to be 
curtsied to by the properly ignorant little girls, and capped 
by the properly ignorant little boys, whenever we pass by. 

Mind, I do not say that this is not the right state of 
things. Only, if it be, you need not be so over-particular 
about the slave-trade, it seems to me. What is the use 
of arguing so pertinaciously that a black's skull will hold 
as much as a white's, when you are declaring in the same 
breath that a white's skull must not hold as much as it 
can, or it will be the worse for him? It does not appear 
to me at all a profound state of slavery to be whipped 
into doing a piece of low work that I don't like ; but 
it is a very profound state of slavery, to be kept, my- 
self, low in the forehead, that I may not dislike low 
work. 

You see, my friend, the dilemma is really an awkward 
one, whichever way you look at it. But, what is still 
worse, I am not puzzled only, at this part of my scheme, 
about the boys I shall have to make workmen of; I am 
just as much puzzled about the boys I shall have to make 
nothing of! Grant, that by hook or crook, by reason or 
rattan, I persuade a certain number of the roughest ones 



LETTER XVn. DIFFICULTIES. 113 

into some serviceable business, and get coats and shoes 
made for the rest, — what is the business of " the rest " to 
be ? Naturally, according to the existing state of things, 
one supposes they are to belong to some of the gentle- 
manly professions ; to be soldiers, lawyers, doctors, or 
clergymen. But alas, I shall not want any soldiers, of 
special skill or pugnacity ? All my boys will be soldiers. 
So far from wanting any lawyers, of the kind that live by 
talking, I shall have the strongest possible objection to 
their appearance in the country. For doctors, I shall 
always entertain a profound respect ; but when I get 
my athletic education fairly established, of what help to 
them will my respect be ? They will all starve ! And 
for clergymen, it is true, I shall have a large number 
of episcopates — one over every hundred families — (and 
many positions of civil authority also, for civil officers, 
above them and below), but all these places will involve 
much hard work, and be anything but covetable ; while, 
of clergymen's usual work, admonition, theological dem- 
onstration, and the like, I shall want very little done 
indeed, and that little done for nothing ! for I will allow 
no man to admonish anybody, until he has previously 
earned his own dinner by more productive work than 
admonition. 

Well, 1 wish, my friend, you would write me a word or 



114 TIME AND TIDE. 

two in answer to this, telling ine jour own ideas as to the 
proper issue out of these difficulties. I should like to 
know what you think, and what you suppose others will 
think, before I tell you my own notions about the matter. 



Cettcr IS. 

Tlie harmful Effects of Servile Employments. — The pos- 
sible Practice and Exhibition of sincere Humility by 

Religious Persons. 

April 7, 1867. 

I have been waiting these three days to know what 
you would say to my last questions ; and now you send 
me two pamphlets of Combe's to read! I never read 
anything in spring-time (except the Ai, Ai, on the " san- 
guine flower inscribed with woe ") ; and besides if, as 1 
gather from your letter, Combe thinks that among well- 
educated boys there would be a per-centage constitution- 
ally inclined to be cobblers, or looking forward with 
unction to establishment in the oil and tallow line, or 
fretting themselves for a flunkey's uniform, nothing that 
he could say would make me agree with him. I know, as 
well as he does, the unconquerable differences in the clay 
of the human creature : and I know that, in the outset, 
whatever system of education you adopted, a large num- 
ber of children could be made nothing of, and would 
necessarily fall out of the ranks, and supply candidates 



116 TIME AND TIDE. 

enough for degradation to common mechanical business . 
but this enormous difference in bodily and mental capac 
ity has been mainly brought about by difference in occu- 
pation, and by direct mal-treatment ; and in a few 
generations, if the poor were cared for, their marriages 
looked after, and sanitary law enforced, a beautiful type 
of face and form, and a high intelligence, would become 
all but universal, in a climate like this of England. Even 
as it is, the marvel is always to me, how the race resists, 
at least in its childhood, influences of ill-regulated birth, 
poisoned food, poisoned air, and soul, neglect. I often 
see faces of children, as I walk through the black district 
of St. Giles's (lying, as it does, just between my own 
house and the British Museum), which, through all their 
pale and corrupt misery, recall the old " ]^on Angli," and 
recall it, not by their beauty, but by their sweetness of 
expression, even though signed already with trace and 
cloud of the coming life, — a life so bitter that it would 
make the curse of the 137th Psalm true upon our modern 
Babylon, though we were to read it thus, " Happy shall 
thy children be, if one taketh and dasheth them against 
the stones." 

Yes, very solemnly I repeat to you that in those worst 
treated children of the English race, I yet see the mak- 
ing of gentlemen and gentlewomen — not the making of 



LETTER XVIII. HUMILITY. 117 

dog-stealers and gin-drinkers, such as their parents were ; 
and the child of the average English tradesman or 
peasant, even at this day, well schooled, will show no 
innate disposition such as must fetter him for ever to 
the clod or the counter. You say that many a hoy 
runs away, or would run away if he could, from good 
positions to go to sea. Of course he does. I never 
said I should have any difficulty in finding sailors, but 
I shall in finding fishmongers. I am at no loss for 
gardeners neither, but what am I to do for greengrocers ? 
The fact is, a great number of quite necessary em- 
ployments are, in the accuratest sense, " servile," that 
is, they sink a man to the condition of a serf, or un- 
thinking worker, the proper state of an animal, but 
more or less unworthy of men; nay, unholy in some 
sense, so that a clay is made " holy " by the fact of 
its being commanded, "Thou shalt do no servile work 
therein.'' And yet, if undertaken in a certain spirit, 
such work might be the holiest of all. If there were 
but a thread or two of sound fibre here and there left in 
our modern religion, so that the stuff of it would bear a 
real strain, one might address our two opposite groups 
of evangelicals and ritualists somewhat after this fashion : 
— ■" Good friends, these differences of opinion between 
you cannot but be painful to your Christian charity, 



118 TIME AM) TIDE. 

and they are unseemly to us, the profane ; and prevent 
us from learning from you what, perhaps, we ought. 
But, as we read your Book, we, for our part, gather 
from it that you might, without danger to your own 
souls, set an undivided example to us, for the benefit 
of ours. Yon, both of you, as far as we understand, 
agree in the necessity of humility to the perfection of 
your character. We often hear you, of Calvinistic per- 
suasion, speaking of yourselves as 'sinful dust and 
ashes,' — would it then be inconsistent with your feelings 
to make yourselves into 'serviceable' dust and ashes? 
We observe that of late many of our roads have been 
hardened and mended with cinders; now, if, in a higher 
sense, you could allow us to mend the roads of the world 
with you a little, it would be a great proof to us of 
your sincerity. Suppose only for a little while, in the 
present difficulty and distress, you were to make it a 
test of conversion that a man should regularly give 
Zacheus's portion, half his goods, to the poor, and at 
once adopt some disagreeable and despised, but thoroughly 
useful, trade? You cannot think that this would finally 
be to your disadvantage; you doubtless believe the 
texts, ' He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord,' 
and 'He that would be the chief among you, let him 
be your servant.' The more you parted with, and the 



LETTER XYffl. HUMILITY. 119 

lower you stooped, the greater would be your final reward, 
and final exaltation. You profess to despise human 
learning and worldly riches; leave both of these to 
us; undertake for us the illiterate and ill-paid employ- 
ments which must deprive you of the privileges of 
society, and the pleasures of luxury. You cannot pos- 
sibly preach your faith so forcibly to the world by any 
quantity of the finest words, as by a few such simple 
and painful acts ; and over your counters, in honest 
retail business, you might preach a gospel that would 
sound in more ears than any that was ever proclaimed 
over pulpit cushions or tabernacle rails. And, whatever 
may be your gifts of utterance, you cannot but feel 
(studying St. Paul's Epistles as carefully as you do) 
that you might more easily and modestly emulate the 
practical teaching of the silent Apostle of the Gentiles 
than the speech or writing of his companion. Amidst 
the present discomforts of your brethren you may surely, 
with greater prospect of good to them, seek the title 
of Sons of Consolation, than of Sons of Thunder, and 
be satisfied with Barnabas's confession of faith (if you 
can reach no farther), who, 'having land, sold it, and 
brought the money and laid it at the Apostles' feet.' 

" To you, on the other hand, gentlemen of the embroid- 
ered robe, who neither despise learning nor the arts, we 



120 TIME AND TIDE. 

know that sacrifices such as these would be truly painful 
and might at first appear inexpedient. But the doctrine 
of self-mortification is not a new one to you: and we 
should be sorry to think — we would not, indeed, for a 
moment dishonour you by thinking — that these melodious 
chants, and prismatic brightnesses of vitreous pictures, 
and floral graces of deep- wrought stone, were in any wise 
intended for your own poor pleasures, whatever profane 
attraction they may exercise on more fleshly-minded per- 
sons. And as you have certainly received no definite 
order for the painting, carving, or lighting up of churches, 
while the temple of the body of so many poor living 
Christians is so pale, so mis-shapen, and so ill-lighted; 
but have, on the contrary, received very definite orders for 
the feeding and clothing of such sad humanity, we may 
surely ask you, not unreasonably, to humiliate yourselves 
in the most complete way — not with a voluntary, but 
a sternly «V< voluntary humility — not with a show of wis- 
dom in will-worship, but with practical wisdom, in all 
honour, to the satisfying of the flesh ; and to associate 
yourselves in monasteries and convents for the better 
practice of useful and humble trades. Do not burn any 
more candles, but mould some ; do not paint any more 
windows, but mend a few, where the wind comes in, in 
winter time, with substantial clear glass and putty. Do 



LETTER XVIII. HUMILITY. 121 

not vault any more high roofs, but thatch some low ones ; 
and embroider rather on backs which are turned to the 
cold, than only on those which are turned to congrega-. 
tions. And you will have your reward afterwards, and 
attain, with all your nocks thus tended, to a place where 
you may have as much gold, and painted glass, and sing- 
ing, as you like." 

Thus much, it seems to me, one might say, with some 
hope of acceptance, to any very earnest member of either 
of our two great religious parties, if, as I say, their faith 
.could stand a strain. I have not, however, based any of 
my imaginary political arrangements on the probability 
of its doing so ; and I trust only to such general good 
nature and willingness to help each other, as I presume 
may be found among men of the world; to whom I 
should have to make quite another sort of speech, which 
I will endeavour to set down the heads of, for you, in 
next letter. 



Cetter 19. 

The General Pressure of Excessive and Improper Worky 

in English Life. 

April 10, 1867. 
I cannot go on to-day with the part of my subject I 
had proposed, for I was disturbed by receiving a letter 
last night, which I herewith enclose to you, and of which 
I wish you to print, here following, the parts I have not 
underlined : — 

1, Phene-stbeet, Chelsea, April 8, 1867. 

My dear R : It is long since you have heard of me, and 

now I ask your patience with me for a little. I have but just re- 
turned from the funeral of my dear, dear friend , the first 

artist friend I made in London — a loved and prized one. For years 
past he had lived in the very humblest way, fighting his battle of 
life against mean appreciation of his talents, the wants of a rising 
family, and frequent attacks of illness, crippling him for months at a 
time, the wolf at the door meanwhile. 

But about two years since his prospects brightened * * * and 
he had but a few weeks since veotured on removal to a larger house. 
His eldest boy of seventeen years, a very intelligent youth, so 
strongly desired to be a civil engineer that Mr. , not being 



LETTER XIX. BROKEN REEDS. 123 

able to pay the large premium required for his apprenticeship, had 
been made very glad by the consent of Mr. Penn, of Milwall, to re- 
ceive him without a premium after the boy should have spent some 
time at King's College in the study of mechanics. The rest is a sad 

story. About a fortnight ago Mr. was taken ill, and died 

last week^ the doctors say, of sheer physical exhaustion, not thirty- 
nine years old, leaving eight young children, and his poor widow 
expecting her confinement, and so weak and ill as to be incapable 
of effort. This youth is the eldest, and the other children range 
downwards to a babe of eighteen months. There is not one who 
knew him, I believe, that will not give cheerfully, to their ability, 
for his widow and children ; but such aid will go but a little way in 
this painful case, but it would be a real boon to this poor widow if 
some of her children could be got into an Orphan Asylum. * * * 
If you are able to do anything I would send particulars of the age 
and sex of the children. * * * 

I remain, dear sir, ever obediently yours, 
Fred. J. Shields. 

P.S. — I ought to say that poor has been quite unable to 

save, with his large family ; and that they would be utterly destitute 
now, but for the kindness of some with whom he was professionally 
connected. 

Now this case, of which you see the entire authentic- 
ity, is, out of the many, of which I hear continually, a 
notably sad one only in so far as the artist in question 
has died of distress while he was catering for the public 



124 TIME AND TIDE. 

amusement. Hardly a week now passes without some 
such misery coming to my knowledge ; and the quantity 
of pain, and anxiety of daily effort, through the best part 
of life, ending all at last in utter grief, which the lower 
middle classes in England are now suffering, is so great 
that I feel constantly as if I were living in one great 
churchyard, with people all round me clinging feebly to 
the edges of the open graves, and calling for help, as they 
fall back into them, out of sight. 

Now I want you to observe here, in a definite case, the 
working of your beautiful modern political economy of 
"supply and demand." Here is a man who could have 
" supplied " you with good and entertaining art — say for 
fifty good years — if you had paid him enough for his day's 
work to find him and his children peacefully in bread. 
But you like having your prints as cheap as possible — 
you triumph in the little that your laugh costs — you take 
all you can get from the man, give the least you can give 
to him — and you accordingly kill him at thirty-nine ; and 
thereafter have his children to take care of, or to kill also, 
whichever you choose : but now, observe, you must take 
care of them for nothing, or not at all; and what you 
might have had good value for, if you had given it when 
it would have cheered the father's heart, you now can 
have no return for at all, to yourselves ; and what you 



LETTER XIX. BROKEN REEDS. 125 

give to the orphans, if it does not degrade them, at least 
afflicts, coming, not through their father's hand, its honest 
earnings, but from strangers. 

Observe farther, whatever help the orphans may re- 
ceive, will not be from the public at all. It will not be 
from those who profited by their father's labours ; it will 
be chiefly from his fellow-labourers ; or from persons 
whose money would have been beneficially spent in other 
directions, from whence it is drawn away to this need, 
which ought never to have occurred — while those who 
waste their money without doing any service to the 
public, will never contribute one farthing to this distress. 

Now it is this double fault in the help — that it comes 
too late, and that the burden of it falls wholly on those 
who ought least to be charged with it, which would be 
corrected by that institution of overseers of which I spoke 
to you in the twelfth of these letters, saying, you re- 
member, that they were to have farther legal powers, 
which I did not then specify, but which would belong to 
them chiefly in the capacity of public almoners, or help- 
givers, aided by then- deacons, the reception of such help, 
in time of true need, being not held disgraceful, but 
honourable ; since the fact of its reception would be so 
entirely public that no impostor or idle person could ever 
obtain it surreptitiously. 



126 1IME AN!) TIDE. 

(11th April.) 1 was interrupted yesterday, and I am 
glad of it, for here happens just an instance of the way in 
which the unjust distribution of the burden of charity is 
reflected on general interests ; I cannot help what taint 
of ungracefulness you or other readers of these letters 
may feel that I incur, in speaking, in this instance, of 
myself. If I could speak with the same accurate knowl- 
edge of any one else, most gladly I would ; but I also 
think it right that, whether people accuse me of boasting 
or not, they should know that I practise what I preach. 
I had not intended to say what I now shall, but the 
coming of this letter last night just turns the balance of 
the decision with me. I enclose it with the other; you 
see it is one from my bookseller, Mr. Quaritch, offering 
me Fischer's work on the Flora of Java^ and Latour's on 
Indian Orchidacece, bound together, for twenty guineas. 
Now, I am writing a book on botany just now, for young 
people, chiefly on wild flowers, and I want these two 
books very much; but I simply cannot afford to buy 
them, because I sent my last spare twenty guineas to 
Mr. Shields yesterday for this widow. And though you 
may think it not the affair of the public that I have not 
this book on Indian flowers, it is their affair finally, that 
what I write for them should be founded on as broad 
knowledge as possible; whatever value my own book 



LETTER XIX. — BROKEN REEDS. 127 

may or may not have, it will just be in a given degree 
worth less to them, because of my want of this knowl- 
edge. 

So again — for having begun to speak of myself I will 
do so yet more frankly — I suppose that when people see 
my name down for a hundred pounds to the Cruikshank 
Memorial, and for another hundred to the Eyre Defence 
Fund, they think only that I have more money than I 
know what to do with. Well, the giving of those sub- 
scriptions simply decides the question whether or no I 
shall be able to afford a journey to Switzerland this year, 
in the negative ; and I wanted to go, not only for health's 
sake, but to examine the junctions of the molasse sand- 
stones and nagelnuh with the Alpine limestone, in order 
to complete some notes I meant to publish next spring on 
the geology of the great northern Swiss valley; notes 
which must now lie by me at least for another year ; and 
I believe this delay (though I say it) will be really some- 
thing of a loss to the travelling public, for the little essay 
was intended to explain to them, in a familiar way, the 
real wonderfulness of their favourite mountain, the 
Righi ; and to give them some amusement in trying to 
find out where the many-coloured pebbles of it had come 
from. But it is more important that I should, with some 
stoutness, assert my respect for the genius and earnest 



128 TIME AND TIDE. 

patriotism of Cruikshank, and my mich more than dis- 
respect for the Jamaica Committee, than that I should see 
the Alps this year, or get my essay finished next spring ; 
but I tell you the fact, because I want you to feel how, in 
thus leaving their men of worth to be assisted or defended 
only by those who deeply care for them, the public more 
or less cripple, to their own ultimate disadvantage, just 
the people who could serve them in other ways ; while 
the speculators and money-seekers, who are only making 
their profit out of the said public, of course take no part 
in the help of anybody. And even if the willing bearers 
could sustain the burden anywise adequately, none of us 
would complain; but I am certain there is no man, 
whatever his fortune, who is now engaged in any earnest 
olfices of kindness to these sufferers, especially of the 
middle class, among his acquaintance, who will not bear 
me witness that for one we can relieve, we must leave 
three to perish. I have left three, myself, in the first 
three months of this year. One was the artist Paul Gray, 
for whom an appeal was made to me for funds to assist 
him in going abroad out of the bitter English winter. 
I had not the means by me, and he died a week after- 
wards. Another case was that of a widow whose hus- 
band had committed suicide, for whom application was 
made to me at the same time ; and the third was a per 



LETTER XIX. BROKEN REEDS. 129 

Bonal friend, to whom I refused a sum which he said 
would have saved him from bankruptcy. I believe six 
times as much would not have saved him ; however, I 
refused, and he is ruined. 

And observe, also, it is not the mere crippling of my 
means that I regret. It is the crippling of my temper, 
and waste of my time. The knowledge of all this dis- 
tress, even when 1 can assist it, — much more when I can- 
not, — and the various thoughts of what I can and cannot, 
or ought and ought not, to do, are a far greater burden 
to me than the mere loss of the money. It is perempto- 
rily not my business — it is not my gift, bodily or men- 
tally, to look after other people's sorrow. I have enough 
of my own ; and even if I had not, the sight of pain is 
not good for me. I don't want to be a bishop. In a 
most literal and sincere sense, " nolo episcopari." I don't 
want to be an almoner, nor a counsellor, nor a Member 
of Parliament, nor a voter for Members of Parliament. 
(What would Mr. Holyoake say to me if he knew that 
I have never voted for anybody in my life, and never 
mean to do so !) I am essentially a painter and a leaf 
dissector ; and my powers of thought are all purely mathe- 
matical, seizing ultimate principles only — never accidents ; 
a line is always, to me, length without breadth ; it is 
not a cable or a crowbar ; and though I can almost infah 



130 TIME AND TIDE. 

libly reason out the final law of anything, if within reach 
of my industry, I neither care for, nor can trace, the 
minor exigencies of its daily appliance. So, in everj 
way, I like a quiet life ; and I don't like seeing people 
cry, or die ; and should rejoice, more than I can tell you, 
in giving up the full half of my fortune for the poor, 
provided I knew that the public would make Lord Over- 
stone also give the half of his, and other people who were 
independent give the half of theirs; and then set men 
who were really fit for such office to administer the fund, 
and answer to us for nobody's perishing innocently ; and 
so leave us all to do what we chose with the rest, and 
with our days, in peace. 

Thus far of the public's fault in the matter. Next, I 
have a word or two to say of the sufferers' own fault — for 
much as I pity them, I conceive that none of them do 
perish altogether innocently. But this must be for next 
letter. 



fetter 20. 

Of Improvidence in Marriage in the Middle Glasses ; 
and of the advisable Restrictions of it. 

April 12, 1867. 
It is quite as well, whatever irregularity it may intro- 
duce in the arrangement of the general subject, that 
yonder sad letter ' warped me away from the broad in- 
quiry, to this speciality, respecting the present distress 
of the middle classes. For the immediate cause of that 
distress, in their own imprudence, of which I have to 
speak to you to-day, is only to be finally vanquished by 
strict laws, which, though they have been many a year 
in my mind, I was glad to have a quiet hour of sunshine 
for the thinking over again, this morning. Sunshine 
which happily rose cloudless ; and allowed me to medi- 
tate my tyrannies before breakfast, under the just-opened 
blossoms of my orchard, and assisted by much melodious 
advice from the birds ; who (my gardener having positive 
orders never to trouble any of them in anything, or object 
to their eating even my best pease if they like their fla- 
vour) rather now get into my way, than out of it, when 



132 TIME AND TIDE. 

they see me about the walks ; and take me into most of 
their counsels in nest-building. 

The letter from Mr. Shields, which interrupted us, 
reached me, as you see, on the evening of the 9th instant. 
On the morning of the 10th, I received another, which I 
herewith forward to you, for verification. It is — character- 
istically enough — dateless, so you must take the time of 
its arrival on my word. And substituting M. 1ST. for the 
name of the boy referred to, and withholding only the 
address and name of the writer, you see that it may be 
printed word for word — as follows : — 

Sir, — May I beg- for the favour of your presentation to Christ's 
Hospital for my youngest son, M. N. I have nine children, and no 
means to educate them. I ventured to address you, believing that my 
husband's name is not unknown to you as an artist. 

Believe me to remain faithfully yours, 

To John Ruskin, Esq. * * * 

Now this letter is only a typical example of the entire 
class of those which, being a governor of Christ's Hospital, 
I receive, in common with all the other governors, at 
a rate of about three a day, for a month or six weeks 
from the date of our names appearing in the printed list 
of the governors who have presentations for the current 
year. Having been a governor now some twenty-five 
years, I have documentary evidence enough to found 



LETTER XX. RGSE-OAEDENS. 133 

some general statistics upon : from which there have 
resulted two impressions on my mind, which I wish here 
specially to note to you, and I do not doubt but that all 
the other governors, if you could ask them, would at once 
confirm what I say. My first impression is, a heavy and 
sorrowful sense of the general feebleness of intellect of 
that portion of the British public which stands in need of 
presentations to Christ's Hospital. This feebleness of 
intellect is mainly shown in the nearly total unconscious- 
ness of the writers that anybody else may want a present- 
ation, beside themselves. With the exception here and 
there, of a soldier's or a sailor's widow, hardly one of 
them seems to have perceived the existence of any distress 
in the world but their own ; none know what they are 
asking for, or imagine, unless as a remote contingency, the 
possibility of its having been promised at a prior date. 
The second most distinct impression on my mind i^ that 
the portion of the British public which is in need of 
presentations to Christ's Hospital, considers it a merit 
to have large families, with or without the means of 
supporting them ! 

low it happened also (and remember, all this is 
strictly true, nor in the slightest particular represented 
otherwise than as it chanced ; though the said chance 
brought thus together exactly the evidence I wanted foi 



134 TIME AND TIDE. 

my letter to you) it happened, I say, that on this same 
morning of the 10th April, I became accidentally ac- 
quainted with a case of quite a different kind : that of a 
noble girl, who, engaged at sixteen, and having re- 
ceived several advantageous offers since, has remained 
for ten years faithful to her equally faithful lover ; while, 
their circumstances rendering it, as they rightly con- 
sidered, unjustifiable in them to think of marriage, each 
of them simply and happily, aided and cheered by the 
other's love, discharged the duties of their own separate 
positions in life. 

In the nature of things, instances of this kind of noble 
life remain more or less concealed (while imprudence and 
error proclaim themselves by misfortune), but they are as- 
suredly not unfrequent in our English homes. Let us 
next observe the political and national result of these 
arrangements. You leave your marriages to be settled by 
" supply and demand," instead of wholesome law. And 
thus among your youths and maidens, the improvident, 
incontinent, selfish, and foolish ones marry whether you 
will or not ; and beget families of children, necessarily in- 
heritors in a great degree of these parental dispositions ; 
and for whom supposing they had the best dispositions in 
the world, you have thus provided, by way of educators, 
the foolishest fathers and mothers you could find (the only 



LETTER XX. ROSE-GABDENS. 135 

rational sentence in their letters, usually, is the invari- 
able one, in which they declare themselves " incapable of 
providing for their children's education "). On the other 
hand, whosoever is wise, patient, unselfish, and pure, 
among your youth, you keep maid or bachelor ; wasting 
their best days of natural life in painful sacrifice, forbid- 
ding them their best help and best reward, and carefully 
excluding their prudence and tenderness from any offices 
of parental duty. 

Is this not a beatific and beautifully sagacious sys- 
tem for a Celestial Empire, such as that of these British 
Isles ? 

I will not here enter into any statement of the physical 
laws which it is the province of our physicians to explain ; 
and which are indeed at last so far beginning to be under- 
stood, that there is hope of the nation's giving some of the 
attention to the conditions affecting the race of man, which 
it has hitherto bestowed only on those which may better 
its races of cattle. 

It is enough, I think, to say here that the beginning of 
all sanitary and moral law is in the regulation of marriage, 
and that, ugly and fatal as is every form and agency of 
license, no licentiousness is so mortal as licentiousness in 
marriage. 

Briefly, then, and in main points, subject in minor ones 



136 TIME A^D TIDE. 

to such modifications in detail as local circumstances and 
characters would render expedient, these following are 
laws such as a prudent nation would institute respecting 
its marriages. Permission to marry should be the reward 
held in sight of its youth during the entire latter part of 
the course of their education ; and it should be granted as 
the national attestation that the first portion of their lives 
had been rightfully fulfilled. It should not be attainable 
without earnest and consistent effort, though put within 
the reach of all who were willing to make such effort ; and 
the granting of it should be a public testimony to the fact, 
that the youth or maid to whom it was given had lived 
within their proper sphere, a modest and virtuous life, and 
had attained such skill in their proper handicraft, and in 
arts of household economy, as might give well-founded 
expectations of their being able honourably to maintain 
and teach their children. 

No girl should receive her permission to marry before 
her 17th birthday, nor any youth before his 21st; and it 
should be a point of somewhat distinguished honour with 
both sexes to gain their permission of marriage in the 18th 
and 22d year ; and a recognized disgrace not to have 
gained it at least before the close of their 21st and 24th. 
I do not mean that they should in any wise hasten actual 
marriage; but only that they should hold it a point of 



LETTER XX. ROSE-GAJRDENS. 131 

honour to have the right to marry. In every year there 
should be two festivals, one on the first of May, and one 
at the feast of harvest home in each district, at which fes- 
tivals their permissions to marry should be given publicly 
to the maidens and youths who had won them in that half 
year ; and they should be crowned, the maids by the old 
French title of Rosi&res, and the youths, perhaps by some 
name rightly derived from one supposed signification of 
the word "bachelor" "laurel fruit," and so led in joyful 
procession, with music and singing, through the city street 
or village lane, and the day ended with feasting of the 
poor : but not with feasting theirs, except quietly, at their 
homes. 

And every bachelor and rosier e should be entitled to 
claim, if they needed it, according to their position in life, 
a fixed income from the State, for seven years from the 
day of their marriage, for the setting up of their homes ; 
and however rich they might be by inheritance, their in- 
come should not be permitted to exceed a given sum, pro- 
portioned to their rank, for the seven years following that 
in which they had obtained their permission to marry, but 
should accumulate in the trust of the State, until that 
seventh year, in which they should be put (on certain 
conditions) finally in possession of their property ; and 
the men, thus necessarily not before their twenty -eighth. 



138 TIME AND TIDE. 

nor usually later than their thirty-first year, become eli- 
gible to offices of State. So that the rich and poor should 
not be sharply separated in the beginning of the war of 
life ; but the one supported against the first stress of it 
long enough to enable them by proper forethought and 
economy to secure their footing ; and the other trained 
somewhat in the use of moderate means, before they were 
permitted to have the command of abundant ones. And 
of the sources from which these State incomes for the 
married poor should be supplied, or of the treatment of 
those of our youth whose conduct rendered it advisable to 
refuse them permission to marry, I defer what I have to 
say till we come to the general subjects of taxation and 
criminal discipline, leaving the proposals made in this 
letter to bear, for the present, whatever aspect of mere 
romance and unrealiable vision they probably may, and 
to most readers, such as they assuredly will. Nor shall I 
make the slightest effort to redeem them from these im- 
putations; for though there is nothing in all their pur- 
port which would not be approved, as in the deepest sense 
" practical " — by the " Spirit of Paradise " — 

Which gives to all the self-same bent, 
Whose lives are wise and innocent, 

— and though I know that national justice in conduct, 



LETTEB XX. ROSE-GARDENS. 139 

and peace in heart, could by no other laws be so swiftly 
secured, I confess with much dispeace of heart, that both 
justice and happiness have at this day become, in Eng- 
land, "romanic impossibilities." 



Cetter 21. 

Of the Dignity of the Four Fine Arts ' and of ths 
Proper System of Retail Trade. 

April 15, 1867. 

I return now to the part of the subject at which 
I was interrupted — the inquiry as to the proper means 
of finding persons willing to maintain themselves and 
others by degrading occupations. 

That, on the whole, simply manual occupations are 
degrading, I suppose I may assume you to admit; at 
all events, the fact is so, and I suppose few general 
readers will have any doubt of it.* 

* Many of my working readers have disputed this statement eager- 
ly, feeling the good effect of work in themselves ; but observe, I only 
say, simply or totally manual work; and that, alone, is degrading, 
though often in measure refreshing, wholesome, and necessary. 
So it is highly necessary and wholesome to eat sometimes ; but de- 
grading to eat all day, as to labour with the hands all day. But it 
is not degrading to think all day — if you can. A highly bred court 
lady, rightly interested in politics and literature, is a much finer type 
of the human creature than a servant of all work, however clevei 
and honest. 



LETTER XXI. GENTILLESSE. 141 

Granting this, it follows as a direct consequence 
that it is the duty of all persons in higher stations of 
life, by every means in their power, to diminish their 
demand for work of such kind, and to live with as 
little aid from the lower trades as they can possibly 
contrive. 

I suppose you see that this conclusion is not a little 
at variance with received notions on political economy? 
It is popularly supposed that it benefits a nation to 
invent a want. But the fact is, that the true benefit 
is in extinguishing a want — in living with as few 
wants as possible. 

I cannot tell you the contempt I feel for the common 
writers on political economy, in their stupefied missing 
of this first principle of all human economy — individual 
or political — to live, namely, with as few wants as possi- 
ble, and to waste nothing of what is given you to sup- 
ply them. 

This ought to be the first lesson of every rich man's 
political code. "Sir," his tutor should early say to 
him, " you are so placed in society — it may be for your 
misfortune, it must be for your trial — that you are 
likely to be maintained all your life by the labour of 
other men. You will have to make shoes for nobody, 
but some one will have to make a great many for you, 



142 TIME AND TIDE. 

You will have to dig ground for nobody, but some 
one will have to dig through every summer's hot day 
for you. You will build houses and make clothes for 
no one, but many a rough hand must knead clay, and 
many an elbow be crooked to the stitch, to keep that 
body of yours warm and line. Now remember, what- 
ever you and your work may be worth, the less your 
keep costs, the better. It does not cost money only. 
It costs degradation. You do not merely employ these 
people. You also tread upon them. It cannot be 
helped ; — you have your place, and they have theirs ; 
but see that you tread as lightly as possible, and on as 
few as possible. What food, and clothes, and lodging, 
you honestly need, for your health and peace, you 
may righteously take. See that you take the plainest 
you can serve yourself with — that you waste or wear 
nothing vainly; — and that you employ no man in fur- 
nishing you with any useless luxury." That is the first 
lesson of Christian — or human — economy; and depend 
upon it, my friend, it is a sound one, and has every 
voice and vote of the spirits of Heaven and earth to 
back it, whatever views the Manchester men, or any 
other manner of men, may take respecting " demand 
and supply." Demand what you deserve, and you 
shall be supplied with it, for your good. Demand what 



LETTER XXI. GENTILLESSE. 143 

you do not deserve, and you shall be supplied with 
something which you have not demanded, and which 
Nature perceives that you deserve, quite to the contrary 
of your good. That is the law of your existence, and 
if you do not make it the law of your resolved acts — 
so much, precisely, the worse for you and all connected 
with you. 

Yet observe, though it is out of its proper place 
said here, this law forbids no luxury which men are 
not degraded in providing. You may have Paul Ver- 
onese to paint your ceiling, if you like, or Benvenuto 
Cellini to make cups for you. But you must not 
employ a hundred divers to iind beads to stitch over 
your sleeve. (Did you see the account of the sales 
of the Esterhazy jewels the other day ?) 

And the degree in which you recognize the difference 
between these two kinds of services, is precisely what 
makes the difference between your being a civilized per- 
son or a barbarian. If you keep slaves to furnish forth 
your dress — to glut your stomach — sustain your indolence 
— or deck your pride, you are a barbarian. If you keep 
servants, properly cared for, to furnish you with what you 
verily want, and no more than that — you are a " civil " 
person — a person capable of the qualities of citizenship. 
(Just look to the note on Liebig's idea that civilization 



144 TIME AND TIDE. 

means the consumption of coal, page 200 to 201 of the 
Crown of "Wild Olive,* and please observe tl e sentence 
at the end of it, which signifies a good deal of what I 
have to expand here, — " Civilization is the making of 
civil persons.") 

Now, farther, observe that in a truly civilized and dis- 
ciplined state, no man would be allowed to meddle with 
anv material who did not know how to make the best of 
it. In other words, the arts of working in wood, clay, 
stone, and metal, would all be fine arts (working in iron 
for machinery becoming an entirely distinct business). 
There would be no joiner's work, no smith's, no pottery 
nor stone-cutting, so debased in character as to be entirely 
unconnected with the finer branches of the same art; 
and to at least one of these finer branches (generally in 
metal work) every painter and sculptor would be neces- 
sarily apprenticed during some years of his education. 
There would be room, in these four trades alone, for 
nearly every grade of practical intelligence and produc- 
tive imagination. 

But it should not be artists alone who are exercised 
early in these crafts. It would be part of my scheme of 
physical education that every youth in the State — from 
the King's son downwards — should learn to do some- 

Appendix 9 



LETTER XXI. GENT1LLESSE. 14t> 

thing finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let 
him know what touch meant ; and what stout craftman- 
ship meant ; and to inform him of many things besides, 
which no man can learn but by some severely accurate 
discipline in doing. Let him once learn to take a straight 
shaving off a plank, or draw a fine curve without falter- 
ing, or lay a brick level in its mortar ; and he has learned 
a multitude of other matters which no lips of man could 
ever teach him. He might choose his craft, but whatever 
it was, he should learn it to some sufficient degree of true 
dexterity : and the result would be, in after life, that 
among the middle classes a good deal of their house 
furniture would be made, and a good aeal of rough work, 
more or less clumsily, but not ineffectively, got through, 
by the master himself and his sons, with much further- 
ance of their general health and peace of mind, and 
increase of innocent domestic pride and pleasure, and to 
the extinction of a greal deal of vulgar upholstery and 
other mean handicraft. 

Farther. A great deal of the vulgarity, and nearly all 
the vice, of retail commerce, involving the degradation of 
persons occupied in it, depends simply on the fact that 
their minds are always occupied by the vital (or rather 
mortal) question of profits. I should at once put an end 
to this source of baseness bv making all retail dealers 



146 TIME AND TIDE. 

merely salaried officers in the employ of the trade guilds ; 
the stewards, that is to say, of the saleable properties ol 
those guilds, and purveyors of such and such articles to a 
given number of families. A perfectly well-educated per- 
son might without the least degradation hold such an 
office as this, however poorly paid ; and it would be pre- 
cisely the fact of his being well educated which would 
enable him to fulfil his duties to the public without the 
stimulus of direct profit. Of course the current objection 
to such a system would be that no man, for a regularly 
paid salary, would take pains to please his customers; 
and the answer to that objection is, that if you can train 
a man to so much unselfishness as to offer himself fear- 
lessly to the chance of being shot, in the course of 
his daily duty, you can most assuredly, if you make it 
also a point of honour with him, train him to the 
amount of self-denial involved in looking you out with 
care such a piece of cheese or bacon as you have asked 
for. 

You see that I have already much diminished the 
number of employments involving degradation ; and 
raised the character of many of those that are left. 
There remain to be considered the necessarily pairful or 
mechanical works of mining, forging, and the like : the 
unclean, noisome, or paltry manufactures — the various 



LETTEK XXI. — GENTILLESSE. 147 

kinds of transport — (by merchant shipping, etc.) — and 
the conditions of menial service. 

It will facilitate the examination of these if we put 
them for the moment aside, and pass to the other division 
of our dilemma, the question, namely, what kind of lives 
our gentlemen and ladies are to live, for whom all this 
hard work is to be done. 



Cctter 22. 

Of the normal Position and Duties of the Upper Glasses. 
— General Statement of the Land Question. 

April 17, 1867. 

In passing now to the statement of conditions affecting 
the interests of the upper classes, I would rather have 
addressed these closing letters to one of themselves than 
to you, for it is with their own faults and needs that each 
class is primarily concerned. As however, unless I kept 
the letters private, this change of their address would be 
but a matter of courtesy and form, not of any true pru 
dential use ; and as besides I am now no more inclined to 
reticence — prudent or otherwise ; but desire only to state 
the facts of our national economy as clearly and com- 
pletely as may be, I pursue the subject without respect 
of persons. 

Before examining what the occupation and estate of 
the upper classes ought, as far as may reasonably be con- 
jectured, finally to become, it will be well to set down in 
brief terms what they actually have been in past ages : 



LETTER XXII. THE MASTER. 149 

for this, in many respects, they must also always be. 
The upper classes, broadly speaking, are always origi- 
nally composed of the best-bred (in the merely animal 
sense of the term), the most energetic, and most thought- 
ful, of the population, who either by strength of arm 
seize the land from the rest, and make slaves of them, or 
bring desert land into cultivation, over which they have 
therefore, within certain limits,. true personal right; or 
by industry, accumulate other property, or by choice 
devote themselves to intellectual pursuits, and, though 
poor, obtain an acknowledged superiority of position, 
shown by benefits conferred in discovery, or in teaching, 
or in gifts of art. This is all in the simple course of the 
law of nature; and the proper offices of the uppei 
classes, thus distinguished from the rest, become, there- 
fore, in the main threefold : — 

(A) Those who are strongest of arm have for their 
proper function the restraint and punishment of vice, and 
the general maintenance of law and order ; releasing only 
from its original subjection to their power that which 
truly deserves to be emancipated. 

(B) Those who are superior by forethought and indus- 
try, have for their function to be the providences of the 
foolish, the weak, and the idle ; and to establish such sys- 
tems of trade and distribution of goods as shall preserve 






150 TIME AND TIDE. 

the lower orders from perishing by famine, or any other 
consequence of their carelessness or folly, and to bring 
thern all, according to each man's capacity, at last into 
some harmonious industry. 

(C) The third class, of scholars and artists, of course 
have for function the teaching and delighting of the infe- 
rior multitude. 

The office of the upper classes, then, as a body, is to 
keep order among their inferiors, and raise them always 
to the nearest level with themselves of which those infe- 
riors are capable. So far as they are thus occupied, they 
are invariably loved and reverenced intensely by all be- 
neath them, and reach, themselves, the highest types of 
human power and beauty. 

This, then, being the natural ordinance and function 
of aristocracy, its corruption, like that of all other beau- 
tiful things under the Devil's touch, is a very fearful one. 
Its corruption is, that those who ought to be the rulers 
and guides of the people, forsake their task of painful 
honourableness ; seek their own pleasure and pre-emi- 
nence only; and use their power, subtlety, conceded 
influence, prestige of ancestry, and mechanical instru- 
mentality of martial power, to make the lower orders toil 
for them, and feed and clothe them for nothing, and be- 
come in various ways their living property, goods, and 



LETTER XXn. THE MASTER. 151 

chattels, even to the point of utter regardlessness of 
whatever misery these serfs may suffer through such 
insolent domination, or they themselves, their masters, 
commit of crime to enforce it. 

And this is especially likely to be the case when means 
of various and tempting pleasure are put within the 
reach of the upper classes by advanced conditions of 
national commerce and knowledge : and it is certain to 
be the case as soon as position among those upper classes 
becomes any way purchaseable with money, instead of 
being the assured measure of some kind of worth (either 
strength of hand, or true wisdom of conduct, or imagina- 
tive gift). It has been becoming more and more the 
condition of the aristocracy of Europe, ever since the 
fifteenth century ; and is gradually bringing about its 
ruin, and in that ruin, checked only by the power which 
here and there a good soldier or true statesman achieves 
over the putrid chaos of its vain policy, the ruin of all 
beneath it; which can be arrested only, either by the 
repentance of that old aristocracy (hardly to be hoped), 
or by the stern substitution of other aristocracy worthier 
than it. Corrupt as it may be, it and its laws together, I 
would at this moment, if I could, fasten every one of its 
institutions down with bands of iron and trust for all 
progress and help against its tyranny simply to the 



152 TIME AND TIDE. 

patience and strength of private conduct. And if I had 
to choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny of old 
Austria triumphant in the old and new worlds, and trust 
to the chance (or rather the distant certainty) of some 
day seeing a true Emperor born to its throne, than, with 
every privilege of thought and act, run the most distant 
risk of seeing the thoughts of the people of Germany 
and England become like the thoughts of the people of 
America.* 

* My American friends, of whom one, Charles Eliot Norton, of Cam- 
bridge, is the best I have in the world, tell me I know nothing about 
America. It may be so, and they must do me the justice to observe 
that I, therefore, usually say nothing about America. But this I say, 
because the Americans as a nation set their trust in liberty and in 
equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the possibility of the 
other; and because, also, as a nation, they are wholly undesirous of 
Rest, and incapable of it ; irreverent of themselves, both in the pres- 
ent and in the future ; discontented with what they are, yet having no 
ideal of anything which they desire to become, as the tide of the 
troubled sea, when it cannot rest. 

Some following passages in this letter, containing personal reference! 
which might, in permanence, have given pain or offence, are now 
omitted — the substance of them being also irrelevant to my main pur- 
pose. These few words about the American war, with which they con- 
cluded, are, I thiflk, worth retaining: — "All methods of right Govern- 
ment are to be communicated to foreign nations by perfectness of 
example and gentleness of patiently expanded power, not suddenly, noi 



LETTER XXn. THE MASTER. 153 

But, however corrupted, the aristocracy of any nation 
may thus be always divided into three great classes. First, 
the landed proprietors and soldiers, essentially one politi- 
cal body (for the possession of land can only be maintained 
by military power) ; secondly, the monied men and leaders 
of commerce ; thirdly, the professional men and masters in 
science, art, and literature. 

And we were to consider the proper duties of all these, 
and the laws probably expedient respecting them. Where- 
upon, in the outset we are at once brought face to face 
with the great land question. 

Great as it may be, it is wholly subordinate to those we 
have hitherto been considering. The laws you make 
regarding methods of labour, or to secure the genuineness 
of the things produced by it, affect the entire moral state 
of the nation, and all possibility of human happiness for 
them. The mode of distribution of the land only affects 
their numbers. By this or that law respecting land, you 

at the bayonet's point. And though it is the duty of every nation to 
interfere, at bayonet point, if they have the strength to do so, to save 
any oppressed multitude, or even individual, from manifest violence, it 
it is wholly unlawful to interfere in such matter, except with sacredly 
pledged limitation of the objects to be accomplished in the oppressed 
person's favour, and with absolute refusal of all selfish advantage and 
increase of territory or of political power which might otherwise accrue 

from the victory." 

7* 



154: TIME AND TIDE. 

decide whether the nation shall consist of fifty or of a hun 
dred millions. But by this or that law respecting work, 
you decide whether the given number of millions shall be 
rogues, or honest men ; — shall be wretches, or happy men. 
And the question of numbers is wholly immaterial, com- 
pared with that of character ; or rather, its own material- 
ness depends on the prior determination of character. 
Make your nation consist of knaves, and, as Emerson said 
long ago, it is but the case of any other vermin — " the 
more, the worse." Or, to put the matter in narrower 
limits, it is a matter of no final concern to any parent 
whether he shall have two children, or four ; but matter 
of quite final concern whether those he has, shall, 
or shall not, deserve to be hanged. The "great difficulty in 
dealing with the land question at all arises from the false, 
though very natural, notion on the part of many reformers, 
and of large bodies of the poor, that the division of the 
land among the said poor would be an immediate and 
everlasting relief to them. An immediate relief it would 
be to the extent of a small annual sum (you may easily 
calculate how little, if you choose) to each of them ; on the 
strength of which accession to their finances, they would 
multiply into as much extra personality as the extra pence 
would sustain, and at that point be checked by starvation, 
exactly as they are now. 



LETTER XXH. THE MASTEB. 155 

Any other form of pillage would benefit them only 
in like manner ; and in reality the difficult part of the 
question respecting numbers is, not where they shall be 
arrested, but what shall be the method of their arrest. 

An island of a certain size has standing room only for 
so many people ; feeding ground for a great many fewer 
than could stand on it. Reach the limits of your feeding 
ground, and you must cease to multiply, must emigrate, 
or starve. The modes in which the pressure is gradually 
brought to bear on the population depend on the justice 
of your laws ; but the pressure itself must come at last, 
whatever the distribution of the land. And arithme- 
ticians seem to me a little slow to remark the importance 
of the old child's puzzle about the nails in the horseshoe 
— when it is populations that are doubling themselves, 
instead of farthings. 

The essential land question then is to be treated quite 
separately from that of the methods of restriction of 
population. The land question is — At what point will 
you resolve to stop ? It is separate matter of discussion 
how you are to stop at it. 

And this essential land question — " At what point will 
you stop?" — is itself twofold. You have to consider 
first, by what methods of land distribution you can 
maintain the greatest number of healthy persons ; and 



156 TIME AND TIDE. 

secondly, whether, if by any other mode of distribution 
and relative ethical laws, you can raise their character, 
while you diminish their numbers, such sacrifice should 
be made, and to what extent ? I think it will be better, 
for clearness sake, to end this letter with the putting of 
these two queries in their decisive form, and to reserve 
suggestions of answer for my next. 



Cctter 23. 

Of the Just Tenure of Lands : cmd the proper 
Functions of high Public Officers. 

20th April, 1867. 

I must repeat to you, once more, before I proceed, 
that I only enter on this part of our inquiry to com- 
plete the sequence of its system and explain fully the 
bearing of former conclusions, and not for any imme- 
diately practicable good to be got out of the investiga- 
tion. Whatever I have hitherto urged upon you, it 
is in the power of all men quietly to promote, and 
finally to secure, by the patient resolution of personal 
conduct; but no action could be taken in redistribu- 
tion of land, or in limitation of the incomes of the 
upper classes, without grave and prolonged civil dis- 
turbance. 

Such disturbance, however, is only too likely to take 
place, if the existing theories of political economy are 
allowed credence much longer. In the writings of 
the vulgar economists, nothing more excites my in dig- 



158 TIME AND TIDE. 

nation than the subterfuges by which they endeavour to 
accommodate their pseudo-science to the existing abuses 
of wealth by disguising the true nature of rent. I 
will not waste time in exposing their fallacies, but 
will put the truth for you into as clear a shape as 
I can. 

Kent, of whatever kind, is, briefly, the price continu- 
ously paid for the loan of the property of another person. 
It may be too little, or it may be just, or exorbitant, 
or altogether unjustifiable, according to circumstances. 
Exorbitant rents can only be exacted from ignorant 
or necessitous rent payers ; and it is one of the most 
necessary conditions of state economy that there should 
be clear laws to prevent such exaction. 

I may interrupt myself for a moment to give you 
an instance of what I mean. The most wretched 
houses of the poor in London often pay ten or fifteen 
per cent, to the landlord ; and I have known an instance 
of sanitary legislation being hindered, to the loss of many 
hundreds of lives, in order that the rents of a noble- 
man, derived from the necessities of the poor, might 
not be diminished. And it is a curious thing to me to 
see Mr. J. S. Mill foaming at the mouth, and really 
afflicted conscientiously, because he supposes one man 
to have been unjustly hanged, while by his own failure 



LETTER XXin. LANDMARKS. 159 

(I believe, wilful failure) in stating clearly to the 
public one of the first elementary truths of the science 
he professes, he is aiding and abetting the commission 
of the cruellest possible form of murder on many thou- 
sands of persons yearly, for the sake simply of putting 
money into the pockets of the landlords. I felt this 
evil so strongly that I bought, in the worst part of 
London, one freehold and one leasehold property, con- 
sisting of houses inhabited by the lowest poor ; in order 
to try what change in their comfort and habits I could 
effect by taking only a just rent, but that firmly. The 
houses of the leasehold pay me five per cent. ; the 
families that used to have one room in them have now 
two ; and are more orderly and hopeful besides ; and 
there is a surplus still on the rents they pay, after I 
have taken my five per cent., with which, if all goes 
well, they will eventually be able to buy twelve years 
of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per cent., 
with similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This 
is merely an example of what might be done by firm 
State action in such matters. 

Next, of wholly unjustifiable rents. These are for 
things which are not, and which it is criminal to consider 
■as, personal or exchangeable property. Bodies of men, 
land, water, and air, are the principal of these things. 



160 TIME AND TIDE. 

Parenthetically, may I ask you to observe, that though 
a fearless defender of some forms of slavery, I am no 
defender of the slave trade. It is by a blundering con- 
fusion of ideas between governing men, and trading in 
men, and by consequent interference with the restraint, 
instead of only with the sale, that most of the great 
errors in action have been caused among the emancipa- 
tion men. I am prepared, if the need be clear to my 
own mind, and if the power is in my hands, to throw 
men into prison, or any other captivity — to bind them 
or to beat them — and force them for such periods, as 
I may judge necessary, to any kind of irksome labour; 
and on occasion of desperate resistance, to hang or shoot 
them. But I will not sell them. 

Bodies of men, or women, then (and much more, as I 
said before, their souls), must not be bought or sold. 
Neither must land, nor water, nor air. 

Yet all these may on certain terms be bound, or secured 
in possession, to particular persons under certain condi- 
tions. For instance, it may be proper at a certain time, 
to give a man permission to possess land, as you give 
him permission to marry ; and farther, if he wishes it 
and works for it, to secure to him the land needful for 
his life, as you secure his wife to him ; and make both 
utterly his own, without in the least admitting his 



LETTER XXm. — LANDMARKS. 161 

right to buy other people's wives, or fields, or to sell hia 
own. 

• And the right action of a State respecting its land is, 
indeed, to secure it in various portions to those of its 
citizens who deserve to be trusted with it, according to 
their respective desires, and proved capacities ; and aftei 
having so secured it to each, to exercise only such vig- 
ilance over his treatment of it as the State must give 
also to his treatment of his wife and servants; for the 
most part leaving him free, but interfering in cases of 
gross mismanagement or abuse of power. And in the 
case of great old families, which always ought to be, and 
in some measure, however decadent, still truly are, the 
noblest monumental architecture of the kingdom, living 
temples of sacred tradition and hero's religion, so much 
land ought to be granted to them in perpetuity as 
may enable them to live thereon with all circumstances of 
state and outward nobleness ; hut their income must in 
no wise he derived from the rents of it, nor must they 
be occupied (even in the most distant or subordinately 
administered methods), in the exaction of rents. That 
is not noblemen's work. Their income must be fixed, 
and paid them by the State, as the King's is. 

So far from their land being to them a source of in- 
come, it should be on the whole costly to them, being 



162 TIME AND TIDE. 

kept over great part of it in conditions of natural grace, 
which return no rent but their loveliness; and the rest 
made, at whatever cost, exemplary in perfection of such 
agriculture as developes the happiest peasant life ; agri- 
culture which, as I will show you hereafter, must reject 
the aid of all mechanism except that of instruments 
guided solely by the human hand, or by animal, or di- 
rectly natural forces ; and which, therefore, cannot com- 
pete for profitableness with agriculture carried on by aid 
of machinery. 

And now for the occupation of this body of men, 
maintained at fixed perennial cost of the State. 

You know I said I should want no soldiers of special 
skill or pugnacity, for all my boys would be soldiers. 
But I assuredly want captains of soldiers, of special skill 
and pugnacity. And also, I said I should strongly object 
to the appearance of any lawyers in my territory. Mean- 
ing, however, by lawyers, people who live by arguing about 
law — not people appointed to administer law ; and people 
who live by eloquently misrepresenting facts — not people 
appointed to discover and plainly represent them. 

Therefore, the youth of this landed aristocracy are to 
be trained in my schools to these two great callings, not 
by which, but in which, they are to live. 

They are to be trained, all of them, in perfect science 



LETTER XXni. LANDMARKS. 163 

of war, and in perfect science of essential law. And 
from their body are to be chosen the captains and the 
judges of England, its advocates, and generally its State 
officers, all such functions being held for fixed pay (as 
already our officers of the Church and army are paid), 
and no function connected with the administration of law 
ever paid by casual fee. And the head of such family 
should, in his own right, having passed due (and high) 
examination in the science of law, and not otherwise, be 
a judge, law ward or Lord, having jurisdiction both in 
civil and criminal cases, such as our present judges have, 
after such case shall have been fully represented before, 
and received verdict from, a jury, composed exclusively 
of the middle or lower orders, and in which no member 
of the aristocracy should sit. But from the decision of 
these juries, or from the Lord's sentence, there should be 
a final appeal to a tribunal, the highest in the land, held 
solely in the King's name, and over which, in the capital, 
the King himself should preside, and therein give judg- 
ment on a fixed number of days in each year ; and in 
other places and at other times, Judges appointed by elec- 
tion (under certain conditions) out of any order of men 
in the State (the election being national, not provincial), 
and all causes brought before these judges should be 
decided, without appeal, by their own authority ; not by 



164 TIME AND TIDE. 

juries. This, then, recasting it for you into brief view, 
would be the entire scheme of State authorities : — 

1. The King : exercising, as part both of his preroga- 
tive and his duty, the office of a supreme judge at stated 
times in the central court of appeal of his kingdom. 

2. Supreme judges appointed by national election ; 
exercising sole authority in courts of final appeal. 

3. Ordinary judges, holding the office hereditarily 
under conditions ; and with power to add to their num- 
ber (and liable to have it increased if necessary by the 
King's appointment) : the office of such judges being 
to administer the national laws under the decision of 
juries. 

4. State officers charged with the direction of public 
agency in matters of public utility. 

5. Bishops, charged with offices of supervision and aid, 
to family by family, and person by person. 

6. The officers of war, of various ranks. 

7. The officers of public instruction, of various ranks. 
I have sketched out this scheme for you somewhat 

prematurely, for I would rather have conducted you to 
it step by step, and as I brought forward the reasons for 
the several parts of it ; but it is on other grounds de- 
sirable that you should have it to refer to, as I go on. 
Without depending anywise upon nomenclature, yet 



LETTER XXm. LANDMARKS. 165 

holding it important as a sign and record of the mean- 
ings of things, I may tell you further that I should call 
the elected supreme Judges, " Princes ; " the hereditary 
Judges, " Lords ; " and the officers of public guidance, 
" Dukes ; " and that the social rank of these persons 
would be very closely correspondent to that implied by 
such titles under our present constitution ; only much 
more real and useful. And in conclusion of this letter, 
I will but add, that if you, or other readers, think it idle 
of me to write or dream of such things ; as if any of 
them were in our power, or within possibility of any 
near realisation, and above all, vain to write of them to 
a workman at Sunderland : you are to remember what I 
told you at the beginning, that I go on with this part of 
my subject in some fulfilment of my long-conceived plan, 
too large to receive at present any deliberate execution 
from my failing strength (being the body of the work 
to which u Munera Pulveris " was intended merely for 
an introduction) ; and that I address it to you be- 
cause I know that the working men of England must 
for some time be the only body to which we can look 
for resistance to the deadly influence of monied power. 
I intend, however, to write to you at this moment 
one more letter, partly explanatory of minor details 
necessarily omitted in this, and chiefly of the proper 



166 TIME AND TIDE. 

office of the soldier ; and then I must delay the com- 
pletion of even this poor task until after the days have 
turned, for I have quite other work to do in the bright- 
ness of tho full-opened spring. 

P.S. — As I have used somewhat strong language, both 
here and elsewhere, of the equivocations of the econo- 
mists on the subject of rent, I had better refer you to 
one characteristic example. You will find in paragraph 
5th and 6th of Book II., chap. 2, of Mr. Mill's "Princi- 
ples," that the right to tenure of laud is based, by his 
admission, only on the proprietor's being its improver. 

Without pausing to dwell on the objection that land 
cannot be improved beyond a certain point, and that, 
at the reaching of that point, farther claim to tenure 
would cease, on Mr. Mill's principle, — take even this 
admission, with its proper subsequent conclusion, that 
"in no sound theory of private property was it ever 
contemplated that the proprietor of land should be 
merely a sinecurist quartered on it." Now, had that 
conclusion been farther followed, it would have com- 
pelled the admission that all rent was unjustifiable which 
normally maintained any person in idleness; which is 
indeed the whole truth of the matter. But Mr. Mill 
instantly retreats from this perilous admission ; and 
after three or four pages of discussion (quite accurate 



LETTER XXIII. LANDMARKS. 167 

for its part) of the limits of power in management of 
the land itself (which apply jnst as strictly to the peasant 
proprietor as to the cottier's landlord), he begs the whole 
question at issue in one brief sentence, slipped cunningly 
into the middle of a long one which appears to be tell- 
ing all the other way, and in which the fatal assertion 
(of the right to rent) nestles itself, as if it had been 
already proved, — thus I italicise the unproved assertion 
in which the venom of the entire falsehood is con- 
centrated. 

"Even in the case of cultivated land, a man whom, 
though only one among millions, the law permits to 
hold thousands of acres as his single share, is not en- 
titled to think that all this is given to him to use and 
abuse, and deal with it as if it concerned nobody but 
himself. The rents or profits which lie can obtain from 
it are his, and his only ; but with regard to the land, 
in everything which he abstains from doing, he is morally 
bound, and should, whenever the case admits, be legally 
compelled, to make his interest and pleasure consistent 
with the public good." 

I say, this sentence in italics is slipped cunningly 
into the long sentence, as if it were of no great conse- 
quence ; and above I have expressed my belief that Mr. 
Mill's equivocations on this subject are wilful. It is 



168 TIME AND TIDE. 

a grave accusation; but I cannot, by any stretch of 
charity, attribute these misrepresentations to absolute 
dulness and bluntness of brain, either in Mr. Mill or 
his follower, Mr. Fawcett. Mr. Mill is capable of im- 
mense involuntary error; but his involuntary errors 
are usually owing to his seeing only one or two of the 
many sides of a thing: not to obsciire sight of the side 
he does see. Thus, his "Essay on Liberty" only takes 
cognisance of facts that make for liberty, and of none 
that make for restraint. But in its statement of all 
that can be said for liberty, it is so clear and keen that 
I have myself quoted it before now as the best authority 
on that side. And if arguing in favour of Rent, abso- 
lutely, and' with clear explanation of what it was, he 
had then defended it with all his might, I should have 
attributed to him only the honest shortsightedness of 
partisanship; but when I find his defining sentences 
full of subtle entanglement and reserve — and that re- 
serve held throughout his treatment of this particular 
subject — I cannot, whether I utter the suspicion or not, 
keep the sense of wilfulness in the misrepresentation 
from remaining in my mind. And if there be indeed 
ground for this blame, and Mr. Mill, for fear of fostering 
political agitation,* has disguised what he knows to be 

*With at last the natural consequences of cowardice, — nitroglyo- 



LETTER XXlfl. LANDMARKS. 169 

facts about rent, I would ask him as one of the leading 
members of the Jamaica Committee, which is the greater 
crime, boldly to sign warrant for the sudden death of 
one man, known to be an agitator, in the immediate 
outbreak of such agitation, or bj equivocation in a 
scientific work, to sign warrants for the deaths of thou- 
sands of men in slow misery, for fear of an agitation 
which has not begun; and if begun, would be carried 
on by debate, not by the sword ? 

erioe and fireballs ! Let the upper classes speak the truth about 
themselves boldly, and they will know how to defend themselves 
fearlessly. It is equivocation in principle, and dereliction from duty, 
which melt at last into tears in a mob's presence. — (Dec. 16th, 1867.) 

8 



Cctter 24. 

The Office of the Soldier. 

April 22, 1867. 
I must once more deprecate jour probable supposition 
that I bring forward this ideal plan of State government, 
either with any idea of its appearing, to our present pub- 
lic mind, practicable even at a remote period, or with any 
positive and obstinate adherence to the particular form 
suggested. There are no wiser words among the many 
wise ones of the most rational and keen-sighted of old 
English men of the world, than these : — 

" For forms of government let fools contest; 
That which is best administered is best." 

For, indeed, no form of government is of any use among 
bad men ; and any form will work in the hands of the 
good ; but the essence of all government among good 
men is this, that it is mainly occupied in the production 
and recognition of human worth, and in the detection 
and extinction of human unworthiness ; and every Gov- 
ernment which produces and recognizes worth, will also 
inevitably use the worth it lias found to govern with ; 



LETTER XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 171 

and therefore fall into some approximation to such a 
system as I have described. And, as I told you, I do 
not contend for names, nor particular powers — though I 
state those which seem to me most advisable ; on the 
contrary, I know that the precise extent of authorities 
must be different in every nation at different times, and 
ought to be so, according to their circumstances and 
character ; and all that I assert with confidence is the 
necessity, within afterwards definable limits, of some 
such authorities as these ; that is to say, • 

I. An observant one : — by which all men shall be 
looked after and taken note of. 

II. A helpful one, from which those who need help 
may get it. 

III. A prudential one, which shall not let people dig 
in wrong places for coal, nor make railroads where they 
are not wanted ; and which shall also, with true provi- 
dence, insist on their digging in right places for coal, in 
a safe manner, and making railroads where they are 
wanted. 

IY. A martial one, which will punish knaves, and 
make idle persons work. 

Y. An instructive one, which shall tell everybody 
what it is their duty to know, and be ready pleasantly 
to answer questions if anybody asks them. 



172 TIME AND TIDE. 

VI. A deliberate and decisive one, which shall judge 
by law, and amend or make law ; 

VII. An exemplary one, which shall show what is 
loveliest in the art of life. 

You may divide or name those several offices as you 
will, or they may be divided in practice as expediency 
may recommend ; the plan I have stated merely puts 
them all into the simplest forms and relations. 

You see I have just denned the martial power as that 
" which punishes knaves and makes idle persons work." 
For that is indeed the ultimate and perennial soldiership; 
that is the essential warrior's office to the end of time. 
"There is no discharge in that war." To the compel- 
ling of sloth, and the scourging of sin, the strong hand 
will have to address itself as long as this wretched little 
dusty and volcanic world breeds nettles, and spits fire. 
The soldier's office at present is indeed supposed to be 
the defence of his country against other countries ; but 
that is an office which — Utopian as you may think the 
saying — will soon now be extinct. I say so fearlessly, 
though I say it with wide war threatened, at this moment, 
in the East and West. For observe what the standing 
of nations on their defence really means. It means that, 
but for such armed attitude, each of them would go and 
rob the other ; that is to say, that the majority of active 



LETTER XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 173 

persons in every nation are at present — thieves. I am 
very sorry that this should still be so ; but it will not be 
so long. National exhibitions, indeed, will not bring 
peace ; but national education will, and that is soon 
coining. I can judge of this by my own mind, for I am 
myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in this 
Avorld, and am as eagerly-minded to go and steal some 
things the French have got, as any housebreaker could 
be, having clue to attractive spoons. If I could by mili- 
tary incursion carry off Paul Veronese's " Marriage in 
Cana," and the "Yen us Victrix" and the "Hours of St. 
Louis," it would give me the profoundest satisfaction to 
accomplish the foray successfully ; nevertheless, being a 
comparatively educated person, I should most assuredly 
not give myself that satisfaction, though there were not 
an ounce of gunpowder, nor a bayonet, in all France. 
I have not the least mind to rob anybody, however much 
I may covet what they have got ; and I know that the 
French and British public may and will, with many other 
publics, be at last brought to be of this mind also ; and 
to see farther that a nation's real strength and happiness 
do not depend on properties and territories, nor on ma- 
chinery for their defence ; but on their getting such ter- 
ritory as they have, well filled with none but respectable 
persons. Which is a way of infinitely enlarging one's 



174 TIME AND TIDE. 

territory, feasible to every potentate ; and dependent no 
wise on getting Trent turned, or Rhine-edge reached. 

Not but that, in the present state of things, it ma) 
often be soldiers' duty to seize territory,' and h)ld it 
strongly ; but only from banditti, or savage and idle per- 
sons. 

Thus, both Calabria and Greece ought to have been 
irresistibly occupied long ago. Instead of quarrelling 
with Austria about Venice, the Italians ought to have 
made a truce with her for ten years, on condition only 
of her destroying no monuments, and not taxing Italians 
more than Germans ; and then thrown the whole force 
of their army on Calabria, shot down every bandit in it 
in a week, and forced the peasantry of it into honest 
work on every hill side, with stout and immediate help 
from the soldiers in embanking streams, building walls, 
and the like; and Italian finance would have been a 
much pleasanter matter for the King to take account 
of by this time; and a fleet might have been floating 
under Garganus strong enough to sweep every hostile 
sail out of the Adriatic, instead of a disgraced and use- 
less remnant of one, about to be put up to auction. 

And similarly, we ought to have occupied Greece in- 
stantly, when they asked us, whether Russia liked it or 
not ; given them an English king, made good roads for 



LETTER XXIV. THE BOD AND HONEYCOMB. 175 

them, and stout laws ; and kept them, and their hills and 
seas, with righteous shepherding of Arcadian fields, and 
righteous ruling of Salamiuian wave, until they could 
have given themselves a Greek king of men again; and 
obeyed him, like men. 

April 24. 

It is strange that just before I finish work for this 
time, there comes the first real and notable sign of the 
victory of the principles I have been fighting for, these 
seven years. It is only a newspaper paragraph, but it 
means much. Look at the second column of the 11th 
page of yesterday's Pall Mall Gazette. The paper has 
taken a wonderful fit of misprinting lately (unless my 
friend John Simon has been knighted on his way to 
Weimar, which would be much too right and good a 
thing to be a likely one) ; but its straws of talk mark 
which way the wind blows perhaps more early than those 
of any other journal — and look at the question it puts 
in that page, " Whether political economy be the sordid 
and materialistic science some account it, or almost the 
noblest on which thought can be employed ? " Might 
not you as well have determined that question a little 
while ago, friend Public ? and known what political 
economy was, before you talked so much about it? 



176 TIME AND TIDE. 

But, hark, again — " Ostentation, parental pride, and a 
host of moral" (immoral?) "qualities must be recog- 
nized as among the springs of industry ; political econ- 
omy should not ignore these, but, to discuss them, it 
must abandon its pretensions to the precision of a pure 
science." 

Well done the Pall Mall! Had it written "Pru- 
dence and parental affection," instead of " Ostentation 
and parental pride," "must be recognized among the 
springs of industry," it would have been still better ; and 
it would then have achieved the expression of a part of 
the truth, which I put into clear terms in the first sen- 
tence of "Unto this Last," in the year 1862 — which it 
has thus taken five years to get half way into the pub- 
lic's head. 

" Among the delusions which at different periods have 
possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of 
the human race, perhaps the most curious — certainly the 
least creditable — is the modern soi-disant science of po- 
litical economy, based on the idea that an advantageous 
code of social action may be determined, irrespectively 
of the influence of social affection." 

Look also at the definition of skill, p. 87. 

" Under the term ' skill ' I mean to include the 
united force of experience, intellect, and passion, in their 



LETTER XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 177 

operation on manual labour, and under the term i pas- 
sion' to include the entire range of the moral feel- 
ings." 

I say half way into the public's head, because you see, 
a few lines further on, the Pall Mall hopes for a pause 
"half way between the rigidity of Ricardo and the senti- 
mentality of Ruskin." 

With one hand on their pocket, and the other on their 
heart ! Be it so for the present ; we shall see how long 
this statuesque attitude can be maintained ; meantime, it 
chances strangely — as several other things have chanced 
while I was writing these notes to you — that they should 
have put in that sneer (two lines before) at my note on 
the meaning of the Homeric and Platonic sirens, at the 
very moment when I was doubting whether I would or 
would not tell you the significance of the last song of 
Ariel in the Tempest. 

I had half determined not, but now I shall. And 
this was what brought me to think of it — 

Yesterday afternoon I called on Mr. H. C. Sorby, to 
see some of the results of an inquiry he has been follow- 
ing all last year, into the nature of the colouring matter 
of leaves and flowers. 

You most probably have heard (at all events, may 

■*rith little trouble hear) of the marvellous power which 

8* 



178 TIME AND TIDE. 

chemical analysis has received in recent discoveries re 
specting the laws of light. 

My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and 
the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hya- 
cinth, and the rainbow of forest leaves being born, and 
the rainbow of forest leaves dying. 

And, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It 
was but the three hundreth part of a grain, dissolved in 
a drop of water: and it cast its measured bars, for 
ever recognisable now to human sight, on the chord 
of the seven colours. And no drop of that red rain 
can now be shed,, so small as that the stain of it can- 
not be known, and the voice of it heard out of the 
ground. 

But the seeing these flower colours, and the iris of 
blood together with them, just while I was trying to 
gather into brief space the right laws of war, brought 
vividly back to me my dreaming fancy of long ago, that 
even the trees of the earth were "capable of a kind of 
sorrow, as they opened their innocent leaves in vain for 
men ; and along the dells of England her beeches cast 
their dappled shades only where the outlaw drew his 
bow, and the king rode his careless chase; amidst the 
fair defiles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid 
the ambushes of treachery, and on their meadows, day 



LETTER XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. ITS 

by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were 
washed with crimson at sunset." 

And so also now this chance word of the daily jour- 
nal, about the sirens, brought to my mind the divine 
passage in the Cratylus of Plato, about the place of the 
dead : — 

" And none of those who dwell there desire to depart 
thence, — no, not even the Sirens ; but even they, the se- 
ducers, are there themselves beguiled, and they who 
lulled all men, themselves laid to rest — they, and all 
others — such sweet songs doth death know how to sing 
to them." 

So also the Hebrew. 

" And desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long 
home." For you know I told you the Sirens were not 
pleasures, but desires ; being always represented in old 
Greek art as having human faces, with birds' wings and 
feet, and sometimes with eyes upon their wings ; and 
there are not two more important passages in all litera- 
ture, respecting the laws of labour and of Life, than 
those two great descriptions of the Sirens in Homer and 
Plate, —the Sirens of death, and Sirens of eternal life, 
representing severally the earthly and heavenly desires 
of men ; the heavenly desires singing to the motion of 
circles of the spheres, and the earthly on the rocks of 



180 TIME AXD TIDE. 

fatallest shipwreck. A fact which may indeed be re 
garded " sentimentally," but it is also a profoundly im- 
portant politico -economical one. 

And now for Shakespeare's song. 

You will find if you look back to the analysis of it, 
given in " Mimera Pulveris," that the whole play of the 
Tempest is an allegorical representation of the powers of 
true, and therefore spiritual, Liberty, as opposed to true, 
and therefore carnal and brutal Slavery. There is not a 
sentence nor a rhyme, sung or uttered by Ariel or Cali- 
ban, throughout the play, which has not this undermean- 
ing. 

Xow the fulfilment of all human liberty is in the 
peaceful inheritance of the earth, with its " herb yield- 
ing seed, and fruit tree yielding fruit " after his kind ; 
the pasture, or arable, land, and the blossoming, or 
wooded and fruited, land uniting the final elements of 
life and peace, for body and soul. Therefore, we have 
the two great Hebrew forms of benediction, " His eyes 
shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk," 
and again, " Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may 
know to refuse the evil and choose the good." And as 
the work of war and sin has always been the devasta- 
tion of this blossoming earth, whether by spoil or idleness, 
so the work of peace and virtue is also that of the first 



LETTER XXIV. THE ROD AND HONEYCOMB. 181 

day of Paradise, to " Dress it and to keep it." And 
that will always be the song of perfectly accomplished 
Liberty, in her industry, and rest, and shelter from 
troubled thoughts in the calm of the fields, and gaining, 
by migration, the long summer's day from the shortening 
twilight : — 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I ; 

In a cowslip's bell I lie ; 

There I couch when owls do cry. 

On the bat's back I do fly 

After summer merrily ; 

Merrily, merrily, shall I live now 

Under the. blossom that hangs on the bough. 

And the security of this treasure to all the poor, and not 
the ravage of it down the valleys of the Shenandoah, is 
indeed the true warrior's work. But, that they may be 
able to restrain vice rightly, soldiers must themselves be 
first in virtue ; and that they may be able to compel 
labour sternly, they must themselves be first in toil, and 
their spears, like Jonathan's at Beth-aven, enlighteners 
of the eyes. 



Ccttcr 25. 

Of inevitable Distinction of Bank, and necessary Submis 
sion to Authority. — The Meaning of Pure- Hearted 
ness. — Conclusion. 

I was interrupted yesterday, just as I was going tc 
set ray soldiers to work; and to-day, here comes the 
pamphlet you promised me, containing the Debates about 
Church-going, in which I find so interesting a text for my 
concluding letter that I must still let my soldiers stand at 
ease for a little while. Look at its twenty-fifth page, and 
you will find, in the speech of Mr. Thomas (carpenter), 
this beautiful explanation of the admitted change in the 
general public mind, of which Mr. Thomas, for his part, 
highly approves (the getting out of the unreasonable 
habit of paying respect to anybody). There were many 
reasons to Mr. Thomas's mind why the working classes 
did not attend places of worship; one was, that "the 
parson was regarded as an object of reverence. In the 
little town he came from, if a poor man did not make a 
bow to the parson he was a marked man. This was no 
doubt wearing away to a great extent " (the base habit of 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 183 

making bows), "because, the poor man was beginning 
to get education, and to think for himself. It was only 
while the priest kept the press from him that he was kept 
ignorant, and was compelled to bow, as it were, to the 
parson. ... It was the case all over England. The clergy- 
man seemed to think himself something superior. Now 
he (Mr. Thomas) did not admit there was any inferiority " 
(laughter, audience throughout course of meeting mainly 
in the right), " expect, perhaps, on the score of his having 
received a classical education, which the poor man could 
not get." 

Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the 
veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh ; this 
infidelity of the nineteenth-century St. Thomas in there 
being anything better than, himself, alive ; coupled, as it 
always is, with the farther resolution — if unwillingly con- 
vinced of the fact — to seal the Better living thing down 
again out of his way, under the first stone handy. I had 
not intended, till we entered on the second section of our 
inquiry, namely, into the influence of gentleness (having 
hitherto, you see, been wholly concerned with that of 
justice), to give you the clue out of our dilemma about 
equalities produced by education ; but by this speech of 
our superior carpenter's, I am driven into it at once, and 
it is perh aps as well. 



184 TIME AND TIDE. 

The speech is not, observe, without its own root 01 
truth at the bottom of it, nor at all, as I think, ill intend- 
ed by the speaker ; but you have in it a clear instance of 
what I was saying in the sixteenth of these letters, — that 
education teas desired by tlie lower orders because they 
thought it would make them upper orders, and be a 
leveller and effacer of distinctions. They will be mightily 
astonished, when they really get it, to find that it is, on 
the contrary, the fatallest of all disceniers and enforcers 
of distinctions ; piercing, even to the division of the 
joints and marrow, to find out wherein your body and soul 
are less, or greater, than other bodies and souls, and to 
sign deed of separation with unequivocal seal. 

Education is, indeed, of all differences not divinely 
appointed, an instant effacer, and reconciler. Whatever 
is undivinely poor, it will make rich ; whatever is undi- 
vinely maimed, and halt, and blind, it will make whole, 
and equal, and seeing. The blind and the lame are to 
it as to David at the siege of the Tower of the Kings, 
"hated of David's soul." But there are other divinely- 
appointed differences, eternal as the ranks of the everlast- 
ing hills, and as the strength of their ceaseless waters. 
And these, education does not do away with ; but 
measures, manifests, and employs. 

In the handful of shingle which you gather from the 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 185 

sea-beach, which the indiscriminate sea, with equality of 
fraternal foam, has only educated to be, every one, round, 
you will see little difference between the noble and mean 
stones. But the jeweller's trenchant education of them 
will tell you another story. Even the meanest will be 
better for it, but the noblest so much better that you can 
class the two together no more. The fair veins and 
colours are all clear now, and so stern is Nature's 
intent regarding this, that not only will the polish show 
which is best, but the best will take the most polish. 
You shall not merely see they have more virtue than the 
others, but see that more of virtue more clearly ; and the 
less virtue there is, the more dimly you shall see what 
there is of it. 

And the law about education, which is sorrowfullest to 
to vulgar pride, is this — that all its gains are at com- 
pound interest ; .so that, as our work proceeds, every hour 
throws us farther behind the greater men w T ith whom we 
began on equal terms. Two children go to school hand 
in hand, and spell for half an hour over the same page. 
Through all their lives, never shall they spell from the 
same page more. One is presently a page ahead, — two 
pages, ten pages, — and evermore, though each toils equally, 
the interval enlarges— at birth nothing, at death, infinite. 

And by this you may recognise true education from 



186 TIME AND TIDE. 

false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms 
you, and makes jou every day think more of yoursell 
And true education is a deadly cold thing, with a Gor- 
gon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think 
worse of yourself. 

Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is per- 
petually increasing the personal sense of ignorance and 
the personal sense of fault. And this last is the truth 
which is at the bottom of the common evangelical notions 
about conversion, and wilich the Devil has got hold of, 
and hidden, until, instead of seeing and confessing per- 
sonal ignorance and fault, as compared w T ith the sense 
and virtue of others, people see nothing but corruption in 
human nature, and shelter their own sins under accusation 
of their race (the worst of all assertions of equality and 
fraternity). And so they avoid the blessed and strength- 
ening pain of finding out wherein they are fools, as 
compared with other men, by calling everybody else a fool 
too; and avoid the pain of discerning their own faults, 
by vociferously claiming their share in the great capital 
of original sin. 

I must also, therefore, tell you here what properly 
ought to have begun the next following section of our 
subject — the point usually unnoticed in the parable of 
the Prodigal Son. 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 187 

First, have you observed that all Christ's main teach 
Lags, by direct order, by earnest parable, and by his own 
permanent emotion, regard the use and misuse of money f 
We might have thought, if we had been asked what a 
divine teacher was most likely to teach, that he would 
have left inferior persons to give directions about money ; 
and himself spoken only concerning faith and love, and 
the discipline of the passions, and the guilt of the crimes 
of soul against soul. But not so. He speaks in general 
terms of these. But he does not speak parables about 
them for all men's memory, nor permit himself fierce 
indignation against them, in all men's sight. The Phari- 
sees bring Him an adulteress. He writes her forgiveness 
on the dust of wmich He had formed her. Another, de- 
spised of all for known sin, He recognized as a giver of 
unknown love. But he acknowledges no love in buyers 
and sellers in His house. One should have thought there 
were people in that house twenty times worse than they ; 
— Caiaphas and his like — false priests, false prayer- 
makers, false leaders of the people — who needed putting 
to silence, or to flight, with darkest wrath. But the 
scourge is only against the traffickers and thieves. The 
two most intense of all the parables : the two which lead 
the rest in love and in terror (this of the Prodigal, and of 
Dives) relate, both of them, to management of riches. 



Ibti TIME AND TIDE. 

The practical order given to the only seeker of advice, 
of whom it is recorded that Christ " loved him," is briefly 
about his property. " Sell that thou hast." 

And the arbitrament of the day of Last Judgment is 
made to rest wholly, neither on belief in God, nor in any 
spiritual virtue in man, nor on freedom from stress of 
stormy crime, but on this only, "I was an hungered and 
ye gave me drink ; naked, and ye clothed me ; sick, and 
ye came unto me." 

Well, then, the tirst thing I want you to notice in the 
parable of the Prodigal Son (and the last thing which 
people usually do notice in it), is — that it is about a 
Prodigal ! He begins by asking for his share of his 
father's goods; he gets it, carries it off, and wastes it. 
It is true that he wastes it in riotous living, but you are 
not asked to notice in what kind of riot : He spends it 
with harlots — but it is not the harlotry which his elder 
brother accuses him of mainly, but of having devoured 
his father's living. Nay, it is not the sensual life which 
he accuses himself of — or which the manner of his 
punishment accuses him of. But the wasteful life. It is 
not said that he had become debauched in soul, or 
diseased in body, by his vice ; but that at last he would 
fain have filled his belly with husks, and could not. It 
is not said that he was struck with remorse for the conse- 



LETTER XXV.- -HYSSOP. 189 

quences of Lis evil passions, but only that he remembered 
there was bread enough and to spare, even for the 
servants, at home. 

Now, my friend, do not think I want to extenuate sins 
of passion (though, in very truth, the sin of Magdalene 
is a light one compared to that of Judas) ; but observe, 
sins of passion, if of real passion, are often the errors 
and back-falls of noble souls ; but prodigality is mere and 
pure selfishness, and essentially the sin of an ignoble or 
undeveloped creature ; and I would rather, ten times 
rather, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of temptation 
and conditions of resistance being understood) he had 
fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all the mortal 
ones, than that he was in the habit of running bills which 
he could not pay. 

Farther, though I hold that the two crowning and most 
accursed sins of the society of this present day are the 
carelessness with which it regards the betrayal of women, 
and brutality with which it suffers the neglect of chil- 
dren, both these head and chief crimes, and all others, are 
rooted first in abuse of the laws, and neglect of the duties, 
concerning wealth. And thus the love of money, with the 
parallel (and, observe, mathematically commensurate loose- 
ness in management of it), the " trial tener," followed nec- 
essarily by the " mal dare," is, indeed, the root of all evil 



190 TIME AND TIDE. 

Then, secondly, I want you to note that when the 
prodigal comes to his senses, he complains of nobody but 
himself, and speaks of no unworthiness but his own. He 
says nothing against any of the women who tempted him 
— nothing against the citizen who left him to feed on 
husks — nothing of the false friends of whom "no man 
gave unto him " — above all, nothing of the " corruption 
of human nature," or the corruption of things in general. 
He says that he himself is unworthy, as distinguished 
from honourable persons, and that he himself has sinned, 
as distinguished from righteous persons. And that is the 
hard lesson to learn, and the beginning of faithful lessons. 
All right and fruitful humility, and purging of Heart, and 
seeing of God, is in that. It is easy to call yourself the 
chief of sinners, expecting every sinner round you to 
decline — or return — the compliment; but learn to 
measure the real degrees of your own relative baseness, 
and to be ashamed, not in heaven's sight, but in man's 
sight; and redemption is indeed begun. Observe the 
phrase, I have sinned " against heaven," against the great 
law of that, and before thee, visibly degraded before my 
human sire and guide, unworthy any more of being 
esteemed of his blood, and desirous only of taking the 
place I deserve among his servants. 

Now, I do not doubt but that I shall set many a 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 191 

readers teeth on edge by what he will think my carnal 
and material rendering of this " beautiful " parable. But 
I am just as ready to spiritualize it as he is, provided I 
am sure first that we understand it. Tf we want to 
understand the parable of the sower, we must first 
think of it as of literal husbandry; if we want to 
understand the parable of the prodigal, we must first 
understand it as of literal prodigality. And the story 
has also for us a precious lesson in this literal sense of 
it, namely this, which I have been urging upon you 
throughout these letters, that all redemption must 
begin in subjection, and in the recovery of the sense of 
Fatherhood and authority, as all ruin and desolation 
begin in the loss of that sense. The lost son began 
by claiming his rights. He is found when he resigns 
them. He is lost by flying from his father, when his 
father's authority was only paternal. He is found by 
returning to his father, and desiring that his authority 
may be absolute, as over a hired stranger. 

And this is the practical lesson I want to leave with 
you, and all other working men. 

You are on the eve of a great political crisis ; and every 
rascal with a tongue in his head will try to make his own 
Btock out of you. Now this is the test you must try them 
with. Those that say to you, ' Stand up for your 



192 TIME AND TIDE. 

rights — get your division of living — be sure that you are 
as well off as others, and have what they have ! — don't let 
any man dictate to you — have not you all a right to your 
opinion ? — are you not all as good as everybody else ? — let 
us have no governors, or fathers — let us all be free and 
alike." Those, I say, who speak thus to you, take Nel- 
son's rough order for — and hate them as you do the 
Devil, for they are his ambassadors. But those, the few, 
who have the courage to say to you, " My friends, you 
and I, and all of us, have somehow got very wrong ; we've 
been hardly treated, certainly ; but here we are in a pig- 
gerry, mainly by our own fault, hungry enough, and for 
ourselves, anything but respectable ; w T e must get out of 
this ; there are certainly laws we may learn to live by, and 
there are wiser people than we in the world, and kindly 
ones, if we can find our way to them ; and an infinitely 
wise and kind Father, above all of them and us, if we can 
but find our way to Him^ and ask Him to take us for ser- 
vants, and put us to any work He will, so that we may 
never leave Him more." The people who will say that 
to you, and (for by no saying, but by their fruits, only, you 
shall finally know them) who are themselves orderly and 
kindly, and do their own business well, — take those for 
your guides, and trust them ; on ice and rock alike, tie 
yourselves well together with them, and with much scru- 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 193 

tiny, and cautious walking (perhaps nearly as much i ack 
as forward, at first), you will verily get off the glacier, 
and into meadow land, in God's time. 

I meant to have written much to you respecting the 
meaning of that word " hired servants," and to have gone 
on to the duties of soldiers, for you know " Soldier " 
means a person who is paid to fight with regular pay — lit- 
erally with " soldi " or " sous " — the " penny a day " of the 
vineyard labourers : but I can't now : only just this much, 
that our whole, system of work must be based on the 
nobleness of soldiership — so that we shall all be soldiers 
of either ploughshare or sword; and literally, all our 
actual and professed soldiers, whether professed for a time 
only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of hand, 
when not in actual war; their honour consisting in being 
set to services of more pain and danger than others ; to 
lifeboat service; to redeeming of ground from furious 
rivers or sea — or mountain ruin ; to subduing wild and 
unhealthy land, and extending the confines of colonies in 
the front of miasm and famine, and savage races. 

And much of our harder home work must be done in a 
kind of soldiership, by bands of trained workers sent from 
place to place and town to town ; doing with strong and 
sudden, hand what is needed for help, and setting all 
things in more prosperous courses for the future. 



194 TIME AND TIDE. 

Of all which I hope to speak in its proper place, aftei 
we know what offices the higher arts of gentleness have 
among the lower ones of force, and how their prevalence 
may gradually change spear to pruning-hook, over the 
face of all the earth. 

And now — but one word more — either for you, or any 
other readers who may be startled at what 1 have been 
saying as to the peculiar stress laid by the Founder of our 
religion on right dealing with wealth. Let them be as- 
sured that it is with no fortuitous choice among the attri- 
butes or powers of evil, that "Mammon" is assigned for 
the direct adversary of the Master whom they are bound 
to serve. You cannot, by any artifice of reconciliation, 
be God's soldier, and his. Nor while the desire of gain is 
within your heart, can any true knowledge of the King- 
dom of God come there. ~No one shall enter its strong- 
hold, — no one receive its blessing, except, "he that hath 
clean hands and a pure heart ; " clean hands, that have 
done no cruel deed ; — pure heart, that knows no base 
desire. And, therefore, in the highest spiritual sense that 
can be given to words, be assured, not respecting the lit- 
eral temple of stone and gold, but of the living temple of 
your body and soul, that no redemption, nor teaching, nor 
hallowing, will be anywise possible for it, until these two 
verses have been, for it also, fulfilled : — 



LETTER XXV. HYSSOP. 195 

"And He went into the temple, and began to cast 
out them that sold therein, and them that bought. And 
He taught daily in the temple." 



APPENDICES 



APPENDIX 1. 

Page 18. — Expenditure on Science and An. 

The following is the passage referred to. The fact it relates is sc 
curious, and so illustrative of our national interest in science, that I 
do not apologize for the repetition : — 

" Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen 
to be sold in Bavaria ; the best in existence, containing many speci- 
mens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species 
(a whole kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by 
that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, 
among private buyers, would probably have been some thousand or 
twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven 
hundred: but we would not give seven hundred, and the whole 
series would have been in the Munich museum at this moment, if 
Professor Owen* had not, with loss of his own time, and patient 
tormenting of the British public in the person of its representatives, 
got leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become 
answerable for the other three I — which the said public will doubt- 
less pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the 
matter all the while ; only always ready to cackle if any credit comei 
of it. Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. 
Your annual expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for mili- 

• I originally stated this fact without Professor Owen's permission; which, of course, 
he could not with propriety have granted had I asked it ; but I considered it so impor 
tant that the public should be aware of the fact, that I did what seemed to me right, 
though rude. 



APPENDICES. 197 

tary apparatus ) is at least fifty millions. Now seven hundred pounds 
is to fifty million pounds roughly, as seven pence to two thousand 
pounds. Suppose then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose 
wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent two thou- 
sand a year on his park walls and footmen only, professes himself 
fond of science ; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to tell 
him that an unique collection of fossils, giving clue to a new era of 
creation, is to be had for the sum of sevenpence sterling ; and that 
the gentleman, who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a 
year on his park, answers after keeping his servant waiting several 
months, ' Well ! I'll give you fourpence for them, if you will be an- 
swerable for the extra threepence yourself till next year ! ' " 



APPENDIX 2. 

Page 29. — Legislation of Frederick the Great 

The following are the portions of Mr. Dixon's letters referred to : — 
"Well, lam now busy with Frederick the Great ; I am not now 
astonished that Carlyle calls him Great, neither that this work of his 
should have had such a sad effect upon him in producing it, when I 
see the number of volumes he must have had to wade through to pro- 
duce such a clear terse set of utterances ; and yet I do not feel the 
work as a book likely to do a reader of it the good that some of his 
other books will do. It is truly awful to read these battles after 
battles, lies after lies, called Diplomacy ; it's fearful to read all this, and 
one wonders how he that set himself to this, — He, of all men, — could 
have the rare patience to produce such a laboured, heart-rending piece 
of work. Again, when one reads of the stupidity, the shameful waste 
of our monies by our forefathers, to see that our National Debt (the 
curse to our labour now, the millstone to our commerce, to our fair 
char.ce of competition in our day) thus created, and for what ? 
Even Carlyle cannot tell ; then how are we to tell ? Now, who will 
deliver us ? that is the question ; who will help us in those days of 
idle or no work, while our foreign neighbours have plenty and are 



198 APPENDICES. 

actually selling their produce to our men of capital cheaper than we 
can make it ! House-rent getting dearer, taxes getting dearer, rates, 
clothing, food, &c. Sad times, my master, do seem to have fallen 
upon us. And the cause of nearly all this lies embedded in that 
Frederick ; and yet, so far as I know of it, no critic has yet given an 
exposition of such laying there. For our behoof, is there no one 
that will take this, that there lies so woven in with much other stuff 
so sad to read, to any man that does not believe man was made to 
fight alone, to be a butcher of his fellow man ? Who will do this 
work, or piece of work, so that all who care to know how it is that our 
debt grew so large, and a great deal more that we ought to know ? — 
that clearly is one great reason why the book was written and was 
printed. Well, I hope some day all this will be clear to our people, 
and some man or men will arise and sweep us clear of these hin- 
drances, these sad drawbacks to the vitality of our work in this 
world." 

"5T, Nile Street, Sunderland, Ptb. 7, 1867. 

" Dear Sir, — I beg to acknowledge the receipt of two letters as 
additions to your books, which I have read with deep interest, and 
shall take care of them, and read them over again, so that I may 
thoroughly comprehend them, and be able to think of them for future 
use. I myself am not fully satisfied with our co-operation, and never 
have been ; it is too much tinged with the very elements that they 
complain of in our present systems of trade — selfishness. I have for 
years been trying to direct the attention of the editor of the Co- 
operator to such evils that I see in it. Now, further, I may state that 
I find you and Carlyle seem to agree quite on the idea of the Master- 
hood qualification. There, again, I find you both feel and write as all 
working men consider just. I can assure you there is not an honest, 
ncble, working man that would not by far serve under such master- 
hood, than be the employee or workman of a co-operative store. 
Working men do not as a rule make good masters ; neither do they 
treat each other with that courtesy as a noble master treats his 
working man. George Fox shadows forth some such treatment that 
Friends ought to make law and guidance for their working men and 



APPENDICES. 199 

daves, such as you speak of in your letters. I will look the passage 
up, as it is quite to the point, so far as I now remember it. In Vol. 
VI. of Frederick the Great, I find a great deal there that I feel quite 
certain, if our Queen or Government could make law, thousands of 
English working men would hail it with such a shout of joy and glad- 
ness as would astonish the Continental world. These changes sug 
gested by Carlyle, and placed before the thinkers of England, are the 
noblest, the truest utterances on real kinghood, that I have ever 
read; the more I think over them, the more I feel the truth, the 
justness, and also the fitness of them, to our nation's present dire 
necessities; yet this is the man, and these are the thoughts of his, 
that our critics seem never to see, or if seen, don't think worth print- 
ing or in any way wisely directing the attention of the public thereto, 
alas! All this and much more fills me with such sadness that I am 
driven almost to despair. I see from the newspapers, Yorkshire, 
Lancashire, and other places are sternly endeavouring to carry out 
the short-time movement until such times as trade revives, and I find 
the masters and men seem to adopt it with a good grace and friendly 
spirit. I also beg to inform you I see a Mr. Morley, a large manu- 
facturer at Nottingham, has been giving pensions to all his old work- 
men. I hope such a noble example will be followed by other wealthy 
masters. It would do more to make a master loved, honoured, and 
cared for, than thousands of pounds expended in other ways. The 
Government Savings Bank is one of the wisest acts of late years done 
by our Government. I, myself, often wish the Government held all 
our banks instead of private men ; that would put an end to false 
speculations, such as we too often in the provinces suffer so severely 
by, so I hail with pleasure and delight the shadowing forth by you 
of these noble plans for the future : I feel glad and uplifted to think 
of the good fiat such teaching will do for us ail. 

"Yours truly, 

"Thomas Dixon" 

"57, Nile Street, Sunderland, Feb. 24, 1867. 
" Dear Sir, — I now give you the references to Frederick the Great, 
VoL VI. : Land Question, 365 page, where he increases the numbei 



200 APPENDICES. 

of small farmers to 4,000 (202, 204). English soldie:s and T. C.'s re 

marks on our system of purchase, &c. His law (620, 623, 624), State 

of Poland and how he repaired it (487, 488, 489, 490). I especially 

value the way he introduced all kinds of industries therein, and so 

soon changed the chaos into order. Again, the schoolmasters also 

are given (not yet in England, says T. C). Again, the use he made 

of 15,0002. surplus in Brandenburg ; how it was applied to better his 

staff of masters. To me, the Vol. YI. is one of the wisest pieces of 

modern thought in our language. I only wish I had either your 

power, C. Kingsley, Maurice, or some such able pen-generalship, to 

illustrate and show forth all the wise teaching on law, government, 

and social life I see in it, and shining like a star through all its pages. 

I feel also the truth of all you have written, and will do all I can to 

make such men or women that care for such thoughts, see it, or 

read it. I am copying the letters as fast and as well as I can, and 

will use my utmost endeavour to have them done that justice to they 

merit. 

" Yours truly, 

"Thomas Dixon." 



APPENDIX 3. 
Page 32. — Effect of Modern Entertainments on the Mind of Youth. 

The letter of the Times correspondent referred to contained an 
account of one of the most singular cases of depravity ever brought 
before a criminal court; but it is unnecessary to bring any of its 
details under the reader's attention, for nearly every other number 
of our journals has of late contained some instances of atrocities be- 
fore unthought of, and, it might have seemed, impossible to human- 
ity. The connection of these with the modern love of excitement in 
the sensation novel and drama may not be generally understood, 
but it is direct and constant; all furious pursuit of pleasure ending in 
actual desire of horror and delight in death. I entered into some 



APPENDICES. 201 

fuller particulars on this subject in a lecture given in the spring at 
the Royal Institution, which will be shortly published in a form 
accessible to the readers of these Letters, and I therefore give no ex- 
tracts from it. 



APPENDIX 4. 
Page 68. — Drunkenness as the Cause of Crime. 

The following portions of Mr. Dixon's letter referred to, will be 
found interesting: — 

'• Dear Sir, — Your last letters I think will arouse the attention 
of thinkers more than any of the series, it being on topics they 
in general feel more interested in than the others, especially as in 
these you do not assail their pockets so much as in the former ones. 
Since you seem interested with the notes or rough sketches on gin, 
G- * * * of Dublin was the man I alluded to as making his money by 
drink, and then giving the results of such traffic to repair the 
Cathedral of Dublin. It was thousands of pounds. I call such 
charity robbing Peter to pay Paul ! Immense fortunes are made in 
the Liquor Traffic, and I will tell you why ; it is all paid for in cash, 
at least such as the poor people buy; they get credit for clothes, 
butchers' meat, groceries, &c, while they give the gin-palace keeper 
cash ; they never begrudge the price of a glass of gin or beer, they 
never haggle over its price, never once think of doing that ; but in 
the purchase of almost every other article they haggle and begrudge 
its price. To give you an idea of its profits — there are houses here 
whose average weekly takings in cash at their bars, is 50?., 60?., 70?., 
80?., 90?., to 150?. per week! Nearly all the men of intelligence in it, 
say it is the curse of the working classes. Men whose earnings are, 
say 20s. to 30s. per week, spend on the average 3s. to 6s. per week 
(some even 10s.). It's my mode of living to supply these houses with 
corks, that makes me see so much of the drunkenness ; and that is 
the cause why I never really cared for my trade, seeing the misery 
that was entailed on my fellow men and women by the use of this 



202 APPENDICES. 

stuff. Again, a house with a licence to sell spirit, wine, and ale, to 
be consumed on the premises, is worth two to three times more 
money than any other class of property. One house here worth 
nominally 140?. sold the other day for 520?. ; another one worth 200?. 
sold for 8001. I know premises with a licence that were sold for 
1,300?., and then sold again two years after for 1,800?. ; another place 
was rented for 50?. now rents at 100?. — this last is a house used by 
working men and labourers chiefly ! No, I honour men like Sir W. 
Hrevelyn, that are teetotallers, or total abstainers, as an example to 
poor men, and to prevent his work people being tempted, will not 
allow any public-house on his estate. If our land had a few such 
men it would help the cause. We possess one such a man here, a 
banker. I feel sorry to say the progress of temperance is not so great as 
I would like to see it. The only religious body that approaches to your 
ideas of political economy is Quakerism as taught by G-eorge Fox. Car- 
lyle seems deeply tinged with their teachings. Silence to them is as valu- 
able as to him. Again, why should people howl and shriek over the law 
that the Alliance is now trying to carry out in our land, called the 
Permissive Bill ? If we had just laws we then would not be so mis- 
erable or so much annoyed now and then with cries of Reform and 
cries of Distress. I send you two pamphlets ; — one gives the work- 
ing man's reasons why he don't go to church ; in it you will see a 
few opinions expressed very much akin to those you have written to 
me. The other gives an account how it is the poor Indians have 
died of Famine, simply because they have destroyed the very system 
of Political Economy, or one having some approach to it, that you 
are now endeavouring to direct the attention of thinkers to in our 
country. The Sesame and Lilies I have read as you requested. I 
feel now fully the aim and object you have in view in the Letters, 
but I cannot help directing your attention to that portion where you 
mention or rather exclaim against the Florentines pulling down their 
Ancient Walls to build a Boulevard. That passage is one that would 
gladden the hearts of all true Italians, especially men that love Italy 
and Dante I 



APPENDICES. 203 



APPENDIX 5. 

Page 69.— Abuse of Food. 

Paragraphs cut from Manchester Examiner of March 1"; , 1867 : — 
u A Parisian Character. — A celebrated character has disappeared 
from the Palais Royal. Bene Lartique was a Swiss, and a man oi 
about sixty. He actually spent the last fifteen years in the Palai? 
Royal — that is to say. he spent the third of his life at dinner. Every 
morning at ten o'clock he was to be seen going into a restaurant 
(usually Tissat's), and in a few moments was installed in a corner, 
which he only quitted about three o'clock in the afternoon, after hav- 
ing drunk at least six or seven bottles of different kinds of wine. He 
then walked up and down the garden till the clock struck five, when 
he made his appearance again at the same restaurant, and always at 
the same place. His second meal, at which he drank quite as much 
as at the first, invariably lasted till half-past nine. Therefore, he 
devoted nine hours a day to eating and drinking. His dress was 
most wretched — his shoes broken, his trousers torn, his paletot with- 
out anj' lining, and patched, his waistcoat without buttons, his hat a 
rusty red from old age, and the whole surmounted by a dirty white 
beard. One day he went up to the comptoir, and asked the presiding 
divinity there to allow him to run in debt for one day's dinner. He 
perceived some hesitation in complying with the request, and imme- 
diately called one of the waiters, and desired him to follow him. He 
went into the office, unbuttoned a certain indispensable garment, and, 
taking off a broad leather belt, somewhat startled the waiter by dis- 
playing two hundred gold pieces, each worth one hundred francs. 
Taking up one of them, he tossed it to the waiter, and desired him to 
pay whatever he owed. He never again appeared at that restaurant, 
and died a few days ago of indigestion." 

"Revenge in a B all-Room. — A distressing event lately took 
place at Castellaz, a little commune of the Alpes-Maritimes, near 
Mentone. All the young people of the place being assembled in a 



204 APPENDICES. 

dancing-room, one of the young men was seen to fall suddenly to the 
ground, whilst a young woman, his partner, brandished a poniard, 
and was preparing to inflict a second blow on him, having already 
desperately wounded him in the stomach. The author of the crime 

was at once arrested. She declared her name to be Maria P , 

twenty-one years of age, and added that she had acted from a motive 
of revenge, the young man having led her astray formerly with a 
promise of marriage, which he had never fulfilled. In the morning 
of that day she had summoned him to keep his word, and, upon his 
refusal, had determined on making the dancing-room the scene of her 
revenge. She was at first locked up in the prison of Mentone, and 
afterwards sent on to Nice. The young man continues in an alarm- 
ing state." 



APPENDIX 6. 
Page 74. — Law of Property. 

The following is the paragraph referred to : — 

" The first necessity of all economical government is to secure the 
unquestioned and unquestionable working of the great law of prop- 
erty — that a man who works for a thing shall be allowed to get it, 
keep it, and consume it, in peace ; and that he who does not eat his 
cake to-day, shall be seen, without grudging, to have his cake to- 
morrow. This, I say, is the first point to be secured by social law ; 
without this, no political advance, nay, no political existence, is in 
any sort possible. Whatever evil, luxury, iniquity, may seem to 
result from it, this is nevertheless the first of all equities : and to the 
enforcement of this, by law and by police-truncheon, the nation 
must always primarily set its mind — that the cupboard-door may 
have a firm lock to it, and no man's dinner be carried off by the mob 
on its way home from the baker's." 



APPENDICES. 205 

APPENDIX 7. 

Page 79. — Ambition of Bishops. 

" Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops desir- 
ing power more than light. They want authority, not outlook 
Whereas their real office is not to rule, though it may be vigorously 
to exhort and rebuke; it is the king's office to rule; the bishop's 
office is to oversee the flock, to number it, sheep by sheep, to be 
ready always to give full account of it. Now it is clear he cannot 
give account of the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the 
bodies, of his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to 
do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any moment, 
he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every living soul in his 
diocese, and of its present state. Down in that back street, Bill and 
Nancy knocking each other's teeth out! — Does the bishop know all 
about it ? Has he had his eye upon them ? Can he circumstantially 
explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the 
head ? If he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as high 
as Salisbury steeple ; he is no bishop — he has sought to be at the 
helm instead of the mast-head ; he has no sight of things. ' Nay/ 
you say, 'it is not his duty to look after Bill in the " back street.'" 
What ! the fat sheep that have full fleeces — you think it is only those 
he should look after, while (go back to your Milton) ' the hungry 
sheep look up, and are not fed,' besides what the grim wolf, ' with 
privy paw " (bishops knowing nothing about it) ' daily devours apace, 
and nothing said ? ' ' But that's not our idea of a bishop.' Perhaps 
not ; but it was St. Paul's, and it was Milton's. They may be right, 
or we may be ; but we must not think we are reading either one or 
the other by putting our meaning into their words." — Sesame and 
Lilies, p. 45. 



206 APPENDICE8. 

APPENDIX 8. 

Page 84. — Regulations of Trade. 

I print portions of two letters of Mr. Dixon's in this place • on« 
referring to our former discussion respecting the sale of votes. 

" 57, Nile Street, Sunderland, March 21, 1867. 

" I only wish I could write in some tolerable good style, so that I 
could idealize, or rather realize to folks, the life, and love, and mar- 
riage of a working man and his wife. It is in my opinion a working 
man that really does know what a true wife is, for his every want, his 
every comfort in life depends on her; and his children's home, their 
daily lives and future lives, are shaped by her. Napoleon wisely said, 
1 France needs good mothers more than brave men. Good mothers 
are the makers or shapers of good and brave men.' I cannot say that 
these are the words, but it is the import of his speech on the topic. 
We have a saying amongst us : ' The man may spend and money lend, 
if his wife be ought,' — i. e., good wife ; — ' but he may work and try to 
save, but will have nought, if his wife be nought,' — i. e., bad or thrift- 
less wife. 

" Now, since you are intending to treat of the working man's par- 
liament and its duties, I will just throw out a few suggestions of what 
I consider should be the questions or measures that demand an early 
inquiry into and debate on. That guilds be established in every town, 
where masters and men may meet, so as to avoid the temptations of 
the public-house and drink. And then, let it be made law that every 
lad should serve an apprenticeship of not less than seven years to a 
trade or art, before he is allowed to be a member of such guild ; also, 
that all wages be based on a rate of so much per hour, and not day, as 
at present ; and let every man prove his workmanship before such 
a guild ; and then allow to him such payment per hour as his craft 
merits. Let there be three grades, and then let there be trials of skill 
in workmanship every year ; and then, if the workman of the third 
grade prove that he has made progress in his craft, reward him accord- 



APPENDICES. 207 

ingly. Then, before a lad is put to any trade, why not see what he is 
naturally fitted for? Combe's book, entitled The Constitution of Man, 
throws a good deal of truth on to these matters. Now, here are two 
branches of the science of life that, so far, have never once been given 
trial of in this way. We certainly use them after a crime has been 
committed, but not till then. 

"Next to that, cash payment for all and everything needed in life. 
Credit is a curse to him that gives it, and he that takes it. He that 
lives by credit lives in general carelessly. If there was no credit, 
people then would have to live on what they earned ! Then, after 
that, the Statute of Limitations of Fortune you propose. By the 
hour system, not a single man need be idle ; it would give employment 
to all, and even two hours per day would realize more to a man than 
brealang stones. Thus you would make every one self-dependent — 
also no fear of being out of work altogether. Then let there be a 
Government fund for all the savings of the working man.. I am afraid 
you will think this a wild, discursive sort of a letter. 

" Yours truly, 

"Thomas Dixon." 

" I have read your references to the Times on ' Bribery.' Well, that 
has long been my own opinion ; they simply have a vote to sell, and 
sell it the same way as they sell potatoes, or a coat, or any other sale- 
able article. Voters generally say, ' What does this gentleman want in 
Parliament? Why, to help himself and his family or friends; he does 
not spend all the money he spends over his election for pure good of 
his country 1 No : it's to benefit his pocket, to be sure.' ' Why 
should I not make a penny with my vote, as well as he does with his 
in Parliament ? ' I think that if the system of canvassing or election 
agents were done away with, and all personal canvassing for votes 
entirely abolished, it would help to put down bribery. Let each 
gentleman send to the electors his political opinions in a circular, and 
\hen let papers be sent, or cards, to each elector, and then let them 
jo and record their votes in the same way they do for a councillor in 
.he Corporation. It would save a great deal of expense, and prevent 



208 APPENDICES. 

those scenes of drunkenness so common in our towns during electic ns 
Bewick's opinions of these matters are quite to the purpose, I think 
{see page 201 of Memoir). Again, respecting the Paris matter referred 
to in your last letter, I have read it. Does it not manifest plainly 
enough that Europeans are also in a measure possessed with that 
same demoniacal spirit like the Japanese f " 



APPENDIX 9. 

Page 144. — Greatness Coal-begotten. 

"Here is a bit of paper in my hand,* a good one too, and an 
honest one ; quite representative of the best common public thought 
of England at this moment ; and it is holding forth in one of its lead- 
ers upon our ' social welfare,' — upon our ' vivid life,' — upon the 
' political supremacy of Great Britain.' And what do you think all 
these are owing to ? To what our English sires have done for us, 
and taught us, age after age? No: not to that. To our honesty of 
heart, or coolness of head, or steadiness of will? No : not to these. 
To our thinkers, or our statesmen, or our poets, or our captains, or 
our martyrs, or the patient labour of our poor ? No : not to these ; 
or at least not to these in any chief measure. Nay, says the journal, 
1 more than any agency, it is the cheapness and abundance of our 
coal which have made us what we are.'* If it be so, then 'ashes to 
ashes ' be our epitaph ! and the sooner the better. I tell you, gen- 
tlemen of England, if ever you would have your country breathe the 
pure breath of heaven again, and receive again a soul into her body, 

* A saying of Baron Liebig's, quoted at the head of a leader on the same subject in the 
Daily Telegraph of January 11, 1866, summarily digests and presents the maximum folly 
of modern thought in this respect. " Civilization.'' says the Baron, " is the economy of 
power, and English power is coal." Not altogether so, my chemical friend. Civilization 
is the making of civil persons, which is a kind of distillation of which alembics are in- 
capable, and does not at all imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen into a 
large company of ironmongers. And English pow.T (what little of it may be left) is by 
no means coal, but in leed, of that which, " when the whole world turns to coal, then 
chiefly lives." 



APPENDICES. 209 

instead of rotting into a carcase, blown up in the belly with carbonic 
acid (and great that way), you must think, and feel, for your Eng- 
land, as well as fight for her : you must teach her that all the true 
greatness she ever had, or ever can have, she won while her fields 
were green and her faces ruddy ; — that greatness is still possible for 
Englishmen, even though the ground be not hollow under their feet, 
nor the sky black over their heads." — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 200. 



APPENDIX 10. 

The following letter did not form part of the series written to Mr. 
Dixon ; but is perhaps worth reprinting. I have not the date of 
the number of the Gazette in which it appeared, but it was during the 
tailors' strike in London. 

"To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette: 

" Sir, — In your yesterday's article on strikes you have very neatly 
and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy 
— to wit, that ' the value of any piece of labour cannot be defined ' — 
and that 'all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can 
be got to do it for a certain sum.' Now, sir, the i value ' of any piece 
of labour, that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will 
enable a man to perform it without losing actually any of his flesh or 
his nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight 
of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And 
within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circum- 
stances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five 
years ago — and under pardon of your politico-economical contributors 
— it is not a 'sentimental,' but a chemical, fact. 

" Let any half-dozen of recognized London physicians state in pre- 
cise terms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they 
consider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a labourer in 
any given manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without 
shortening his life, work at such business daily if so sustained. 



210 APPENDICES. 

"And let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between 
an order for that quantity of food and lodging, or such wages as the 
market may offer for that number of hours' work. 

" Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further 
concession — but, in the outset, let but this law of wages be estab- 
lished, and if then we have any more strikes you may denounce them 
without one word of remonstrance either from sense or sensibility. 
" I am, Sir, 

" Your faithful servant, 

"John Ruskih.' 



fjl£ POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART 



THE 



POLITICAL ECONOMY 



^°* M ^^ B * 5 ^ 



£uf$ri 



&ffmrt 



BEING THE SUBSTANCE (WITH ADDITIONS) OF TWO 
LECTURES 

DELIVERED AT MANCHESTER, JULY 10th and 13T3. J 15*. 



BY 



JOHN RUSKIN, M.A., 



AUTHOR OF " MODERN PAINTERS," " ELEMENTS OF DRAWING," 

"LECTURES ON ARCHITECTURE AND PAINTING," 

ETC. ETC. 



NEW YORK: 
JOHN WILEY & SONS, 
15 ASTOR PLACE. 

1878. 



C 




CONTENTS. 



PA6B 

Lfttub- L .••••• ,...11 

1. L-iscovery ••••• t • • • • 24 

2. Application •••••••••30 

I/ynTURJu ii. ...... ....SO 

3. Accumulation .••••••• . . 50 

4. Distribution ... . ?1 

Addenda , 95 

Note 1.— " Fatherly Authority " 95 

" 2.— "Right to Public Support" 99 

it 3._» Trial Schools" 104 

« 4.—" Pubhc Favour " 110 

" 5. — " Invention of new wants " Ill 

« 6.— » Economy of Literature " 113 

« 1.—" Pilots of the State" 115 

« 8.— "Silk and Purple" 116 



PREFACE. 



The greater part of the following treatise remains in the exact 
form in which it was read at Manchester; but the more familiar 
passages of it, which were trusted to extempore delivery, have been 
since written with greater explicitness and fulness than I could 
give them in speaking ; and a considerable number of notes are 
added, to explain the points which could not be sufficiently con- 
sidered in the time I had at my disposal in the lecture-room. 

Some apology may be thought due to the reader, for an en- 
deavour to engage his attention on a subject of which no profound 
study seems compatible with the work in which I am usually em- 
ployed. But profound study is not, in this case, necessary either 
to writer or reader, while accurate study, up to a certain point, is 
necessary for us all. Political economy means, in plain English, 
nothing more than "citizens' economy;" and its first principles 
ought, therefore, to be understood by all who mean to take the 
responsibility of citizens, as those of household economy by all 
who take the responsibility of householders. Nor are its first 
principles in the least obscure : they are, many of them, disagreeable 



Vlll PREFACE. 

i« their practical requirements, and people in general pretend that 
they cannot understand, because they are unwilling to obey them ; 
or rather, by habitual disobedience, destroy their capacity of un- 
derstanding them. But there is not one of the really great prin- 
ciples of the science which is either obscure or disputable — which 
might not be taught to a youth as soon as he can be trusted with 
an annual allowance, or to a young lady as soon as she is of age to 
be taken into counsel by the housekeeper. 

I might, with more appearance of justice, be blamed for think- 
ing it necessary to enforce what everybody is supposed to know. 
But this fault will hardly be found with me, while the commercial 
events recorded daily in our journals, and still more the explana- 
tions attempted to be given of them, show that a large number of 
our so-called merchants are as ignorant of the nature of money as 
they are reckless, unjust, and unfortunate in its employment. 

The statements of economical principle given in the text, though 
I know that most, if not all, of them are accepted by existing au- 
thorities on the science, are not supported by references, because I 
have never read any author on political economy, except Adam 
Smith, twenty years ago. Whenever I have taken up any modern 
book upon this subject, I have usually found it encumbered with 
inquiries into accidental or minor commercial results, for the pursuit 
of which an ordinary reader could have no leisure, and, by the 
complication of which, it seemed to me, the authors themselves had 
been not unfrequently prevented from seeing to the root of the 
business. 



PREFACE. IX 

Finally, if the reader should feel inclined to blame me for too 
sanguine a statement of future possibilities in political practice, let 
him consider how absurd it would have appeared in the days of 
Edward I. if the present state of social economy had been then 
predicted as necessary, 01 even described as possible. And I be- 
lieve the advance from the days of Edward I. to our own, great as 
it is confessedly, consists, not so much in what we have actually 
accomplished, as in what we are now enabled to conceive. 




POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART 



LECTURE I. 



Among the various characteristics of the age in which we live, 
as compared with other ages of this not yet very experienced 
world, one of the most notable appears to me to be the just 
and wholesome contempt in which we hold poverty. I repeat, the 
just and wholesome contempt ; though I see that some of my hear- 
ers look surprised at the expression. I assure them, I use it in 
sincerity; and I should not have ventured to ask you to listen 
to rae this evening, unless I had entertained a profound respect 
for wealth — true wealth, that is to say; for, of course, we ought 
to respect neither wealth nor anything else that is false of its 
kind: and the distinction between real and false wealth is one 
of the points on which I shall have a few words presently to 
say to you. But true wealth I hold, as I said, in great honour ; 
and sympathize, for the most part, with that extraordinary feel- 
ing of the present age which publicly pays this honour to riches. 
I cannot, however, help noticing how extraordinary it is, and how 
this epoch of ours differs from all bygone epochs in having no 
philosophical nor religious worshippers of the ragged godship of 
poverty. In the classical ages, not only were there people who 
vo'untarily lived in tubs, and who used gravely to maintain the 
superiority of tub-life to town-life, but the Greeks and Latins 



12 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. I, 

seem to have looked on these eccentric, and I do not scruple 
to say, absurd people, with as much respect as we do upon large 
capitalists and landed proprietors; so that really, in those days, nc 
one could be described as purse proud, but only as empty-purse 
proud. And no less distinct than the honour which those curious 
Greek people pay to their conceited poor, is the disrespectful man- 
ner in which they speak of the rich ; so that one cannot listen 
long either to them, or to the Roman writers who imitated them, 
without finding oneself entangled in all sorts of plausible absurdi- 
ties ; hard upon being convinced of the uselessness of collecting 
that heavy yellow substance which we call gold, and led generally 
to doubt all the most established maxims of political economy. Nor 
are matters much better in the middle ages. For the Greeks and 
Romans contented themselves with mocking at rich people, and 
constructing merry dialogues between Charon and Diogenes or 
Menippus, in which the ferrymen and the cynic rejoiced together 
as they saw kings and rich men coming down to the shore of 
Acheron, in lamenting and lamentable crowds, casting their 
crowns into the dark waters, and searching, sometimes in vain, foi 
the last coin out of all their treasures that could ever be of use to 
them. But these Pagan views of the matter were indulgent, 
compared with those which were held in the middle ages^ 
when wealth seems to have been looked upon by the best of men 
not only as contemptible, but as criminal. The purse round the 
neck is, then, one of the principal signs of condemnation in the 
pictured inferno; and the Spirit of Poverty is reverenced with 
subjection of heart, and faithfulness of affection, like that of a 
loyal knight for his lady, or a loyal subject for his queen. 
And truly, it requires some boldness to quit ourselves of these 
feelings, and to confess their partiality or their error, which, 
nevertheless, we are certainly bound to do. For wealth is simply 
one of the greatest powers which can be entrusted to human 
hands : a power, not indeed to be envied, because it seldom 



LECT. I.] POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 13 

makes ns happy; but still less to be abdicated or despised; 
while, in these days, and in this country, it has become a 
power all the more notable, in that the possessions of a rich man 
are not represented, as they used to be, by wedges of gold or 
coffers of jewels, but by masses of men variously employed, over 
whose bodies and minds the wealth, according to its direction, 
exercises harmful or helpful influence, and becomes, in that alter- 
native, Mammon either of Unrighteousness or of Righteousness. 

Now, it seemed to me that since, in the name you have given 
to this great gathering of British pictures, you recognise them as 
Treasures — that is, I suppose, as part and parcel of the real wealth 
of the country — you might not be uninterested in tracing certain 
commercial questions connected with this particular form of 
wealth. Most persons express themselves as surprised at its 
quantity; not having known before to what an extent good art 
had been accumulated in England : and it will, therefore, I should 
think, be held a worthy subject of consideration, w T hat are the 
political interests involved in such accumulations; what kind of 
labour they represent, and how this labour may in general be 
applied and economized, so as to produce the richest results. 

Now, you must have patience with me, if in approaching the 
specialty of this subject, I dwell a little on certain points of 
general political science already known or established : for though 
thus, as I believe, established, some which I shall have occasion to 
rest arguments on are not yet by any means universally accepted ; 
and therefore, though I will not lose time in any detailed defence 
of them, it is necessary that I should distinctly tell you in what 
form I receive, and wish to argue from them; and this the more, 
because there may perhaps be a part of my audience w T ho have 
not interested themselves in political economy, as it bears on 
ordinary fields of labour, but may yet wish to hear in what w r ay 
its principles can be applied to Art. I shall, therefore, take leave 
to trespass on your patience with a few elementary statements in 



14 TCLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. V 

the outset, and with the expression of some general principles, 
here and there, in the course of our particular inquiry. 

To begin, then, with one of these necessary truisms : all 
economy, whether of states, households, or individuals, may be 
defined to be the art of managing labour. The world is so regu- 
lated by the laws of Providence, that a man's labour, well applied, 
is always amply sufficient to provide him during his life with all 
things needful to him, and not only with those, but with many 
pleasant objects of luxury ; and yet farther, to procure him large 
intervals of healthful rest and serviceable leisure. And a nation's 
labour, well applied, is in like manner amply sufficient to provide 
its whole population with good food and comfortable habitation ; 
and not with those only, but with good education besides, and 
objects of luxury, art treasures, such as these you have around you 
now. But by those same laws of Nature and Providence, if the 
labour of the nation or of the individual be misapplied, and much 
more if it be insufficient, — if the nation or man be indolent and 
unwise, — suffering and want result, exactly in proportion to the 
indolence and improvidence, — to the refusal of labour, or to the 
misapplication of it. Wherever you see want, or misery, or degra- 
dation, in this world about you, there, be sure, either industry has 
been wanting, or industry has been in error. It is not accident, it 
is not Heaven-commanded calamity, it is not the original and ine- 
vitable evil of man's nature, which fill your streets with lamen- 
tation, and your graves with prey. It is only that, when there 
should have been providence, there has been waste; when there 
should have been labour, there has been lasciviousness ; and wilful- 
ness, when there should have been subordination. 1 

Now, we have warped the word " economy" in our English 
language into a meaning which it has no business whatever to 
bear. In our use of it, it constantly signifies merely sparing or 

1 Pro-; erbs xiii. 23, " Much food is in the tillage o£ the poor, but there iff 
that is destroyed for want of judgment." 



LECT. I.J POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 15 

saving; economy of money means saving money — economy of 
time, sparing time, and so on. But that is a wholly barbarous use 
of the word — barbarous in a double sense, for it is not English 
and it is bad Greek; barbarous in a treble sense, for it is not 
English, it is bad Greek, and it is worse sense. Economy no more 
means saving money than it means spending money. It means, 
the administration of a house; its stewardship; spending or saving 
that is, whether money or time, or anything else, to the best pos- 
sible advantage. In the simplest and clearest definition of it, 
economy, whether public or private, means the wise management 
of labour ; and it means this mainly in three senses : namely, first, 
applying your labour rationally ; secondly, preserving its produce 
carefully ; lastly, distributing its produce seasonably. 

I say first, applying your labour rationally ; that is, so as to ob- 
tain the most precious things you can, and the most lasting things, 
by it : not growing oats in land where you can grow wheat, nor 
putting fine embroidery on a stuff that will not wear. Secondly, 
preserving its produce carefully ; that is to say, laying up your 
wheat wisely in storehouses for the time of famine, and keeping 
your embroidery watchfully from the moth ; and lastly, distribut- 
ing its produce seasonably; that is to say, being able to carry your 
corn at once to the place where the people are hungry, and your 
embroideries to the places where they are gay ; so fulfilling in all 
ways the Wise Man's description, whether of the queenly house- 
wife or queenly nation : " She riseth while it is yet night, and 
giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She 
maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her clothing is silk and pur- 
ple. Strength and honour are in her clothing, and she shall 
rejoice in time to come." 

Now, you will observe that in this description of the perfect 
economist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied expres- 
sion of the balanced division of her care between the two great 
objects of utility and splendour; in her right hand, food and flax, 



16 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. 1 

for life and clothing ; in her left hand, the purple and the needle- 
work, for honour and for beauty. All perfect housewifery or 
national economy is known by these two divisions; wherever 
either is wanting, the economy is imperfect. If the motive of pomp 
prevails, and the care of the national economist is directed only tc 
the accumulation of gold, and of pictures, and of silk and marble, 
you know at once that the time must soon come when all these 
treasures shall be scattered and blasted in national ruin. Jf, on 
the contrary, the element of utility prevails, and the nation dis- 
dains to occupy itself in any wise with the arts of beauty or 
delight, not only a certain quantity of its energy calculated for 
exercise in those arts alone must be entirely wasted, which is bad 
economy, but also the passions connected with the utilities of pro- 
perty become morbidly strong, and a mean lust of accumulation, 
merely for the sake of accumulation, or even of labour, merely for 
the sake of labour, will banish at least the serenity and the morality 
of life, as completely, and perhaps more ignobly, than even the lavish- 
ness of pride, and the lightness of pleasure. And similarly, and 
much more visibly, in private and household economy, you may 
judge always of its perfectness by its fair balance between the use 
and the pleasure of its possessions. You will see the wise cottager's 
garden trimly divided between its well-set vegetables, and its fragrant 
flowers ; you will see the good housewife taking pride in her pretty 
table-cloth, and her glittering shelves, no less than in her well- 
dressed dish, and her full storeroom ; the care in her countenance 
will alternate with gaiety ; and though you will reverence her in 
her seriousness, you will know her best by her smile. 

Now, as you will have anticipated, I am going to address you, 
on this and our succeeding evening, chiefly on the subject of that 
economy which relates rather to the garden than the farm-yard. 
I shall ask you to consider with me the kind of laws by which we 
shall best distribute the beds of our national garden, and raise in it 
the sweetest succession of trees pleasant to the sight, and (in nc 



LECT. 1. 1 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 1 1 

forbidden sense) to be desired to make us wise. But, oefore pro- 
ceeding to open this specialty of our subject, let me pause for a few 
moments to plead with you for the acceptance of that principle oi 
government or authority which must be at the root of all economy, 
whether for use or for pleasure. I said, a few minutes ago, that a 
nation's labour, well applied, was amply sufficient to provide its 
whole population with good food, comfortable clothing, and pleasant 
luxury. But the good, instant, and constant application is every- 
thing. We must not, when our strong hands are thrown out of 
work, look wildly about for want of something to do with them. 
If ever we feel that want, it is a sign that all our household is out 
of order. Fancy a farmer's wife, to whom one or two of her ser- 
vants should come at twelve o'clock at noon, crying that they had 
got nothing to do; that they did not know what to do next: and 
fancy still farther, the said farmer's wife looking hopelessly about 
her rooms and yard, they being all the while considerably in dis- 
order, not knowing where to set the spare hand-maidens to work, 
and at last complaining bitterly that she had been obliged to give 
them their dinner for nothing. That's the type of the kind of 
political economy we practise too often in England. Would vou 
not at once assert of such a mistress that she knew nothing of her 
duties? and would you not be certain, if the household were 
rightly managed, the mistress would be only too glad at any mo- 
ment to have the help of any number of spare hands ; that she 
would know in an instant what to set them to ; — in an instant what 
part of to-morrow's work might be most serviceably forwarded, 
what part of next month's work most wisely provided for, or what 
new task of some profitable kind undertaken ? and when the eve- 
ning came, and she dismissed her servants to their recreation or 
their rest, or gathered them to the reading round the work-table^ 
under the eaves in the sunset, would you not be sure to find that 
none of them had been overtasked by her, just because none had 
been left idle ; that everything had been accomplished because at 



J 8 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. A, 

had been employed ; that the kindness of the mistress had aided 
her presence of mind, and the slight labour had been entrusted to 
thq weak, and the formidable to the strong ; and that as none had 
been dishonoured by inactivity, so none had been broken by toil ? 
Now, the precise counterpart of such a household would be 
seen in a nation in which political economy was rightly under- 
stood. You complain of the difficulty of finding work for your 
men. Depend upon it the real difficulty rather is to find men for 
your work. The serious question for you is not how many you 
have to feed, but how much you have to do ; it is our inactivity, 
not our hunger, that ruins us : let us never fear that our servants 
should have a good appetite — our wealth is in their strength, not 
in their starvation. Look around this island of yours, and see 
what you have to do in it. The sea roars against your harbour- 
less cliffs — you have to build the breakwater, and dig the port of 
refuge ; the unclean pestilence ravins in your streets — you have to 
bring the full stream from the hills, and to send the free winds 
through the thoroughfare ; the famine blanches your lips and eats 
away your flesh — you have to dig the moor and dry the marsh, to 
bid the morass give forth instead of engulphing, and to wring the 
honey and oil out of the rock. These things, and thousands such, 
we have to do, and shall have to do constantly, on this great farm 
of ours ; for do not suppose that it is anything else than that. 
Precisely the same laws of economy which apply to the cultiva- 
tion of a farm or an estate apply to the cultivation of a province 
or of an island. Whatever rebuke you would address to the im- 
provident master of an ill-managed patrimony, precisely that re- 
buke we should address to ourselves, so far as we leave our popu- 
lation in idleness and our country in disorder. What would you 
say to the lord of an estate who complained to you of his poverty 
and disabilities, and, when you pointed out to him that his land 
was half of it overrun with weeds, and that his fences were all in 
ruin, and that his cattle-sheds were roofless, and his labourers ly- 



J-TT. I.] POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 19 

ing under the hedges faint for want of food, he answered to you 
that it would ruin him to weed his land or to roof his sheds — ■ 
that those were too costly operations for him to undertake, and 
that he knew not how to feed his labourers nor pay them? Would 
you not instantly answer, that instead of ruining him to weed hi? 
fields, it would save him ; that his inactivity was. his destruction, 
and that to set his labourers to work was to feed them ? Now 
you may add acre to acre, and estate to estate, as far as you like, 
but you will never reach a compass of ground which shall escape 
from the authority of these simple laws. The principles which 
are right in the administration of a few fields, are right also in the 
administration of a great country from horizon to horizon : idle- 
ness does not cease to be ruinous because it is extensive, nor labour 
to be productive because it is universal. 

Nay, but you reply, there is one vast difference between the 
nation's economy and the private man's : the farmer has full au- 
thority over his labourers ; he can direct them to do what is 
needed to be done, whether they like it or not ; and he can turn 
them away if they refuse to work, or impede others in their 
working, or are disobedient, or quarrelsome. There is this great 
difference ; it is precisely this difference on which I wish to fix 
your attention, for it is precisely this difference which you have to 
do away with. We know the necessity of authority in farm, or 
in fleet, or in army ; but we commonly refuse to admit it in the 
body of the nation. Let us consider this point a little. 

In the various awkward and unfortunate efforts which the 
French have made at the development of a social system, they 
have at least stated one true principle, that of fraternity or brother- 
hood. Do not be alarmed ; they got all wrong in their experi- 
ments, because they quite forgot that this fact of fraternity implied 
another fact quite as important — that of paternity, or fatherhood. 
That is to say, if they were to regard the nation as one family, 
the condition of unitv in that family consisted no less in their hav- 



20 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LF.CT. I. 

ing a head, or a father, than in their being faithful and affection- 
ate members, or brothers. But we must not forget this, for we 
have long confessed it with our lips, though we refuse to confess 
it in our lives. For half an hour every Sunday we expect a 
man in a black gown, supposed to be telling us truth, to address 
us as brethren, |Jiough we should be shocked at the notion of any 
brotherhood existing among us out of church. And we can 
hardly read a few sentences on any political subject without run- 
ning a chance of crossing the phrase " paternal government," 
though we should be utterly horror-struck at the idea of govern- 
ments claiming anything like a father's authority over us. Now, 
I believe those two formal phrases are in both instances perfectly 
binding and accurate, and that the image of the farm and its ser- 
vants which I have hitherto used, as expressing a wholesome 
national organization, fails only of doing so, not because it is too 
domestic, but because it is not domestic enough ; because the real 
type of a well-organized nation must be presented, not by a farm 
cultivated by servants who wrought for hire, and might be turned 
awav if they refused to labour, but by a farm in which the master 
was a father, and in which all the servants were sons ; which im- 
plied, therefore, in all its regulations, not merely the order of expe- 
diency, but the bonds of affection and responsibilities of relation- 
ship ; and in which all acts and services were not only to be sweet- 
ened by brotherly concord, but to be encfored by fatherly authority. 1 
Observe, I do not mean in the least that we ought to place such 
an authority in the hands of any one person, or of any class, or 
body of persons. But I do mean to say that as an individual who 
conducts himself wisely must make laws for himself which at 
some time or other may appear irksome or injurious, but which, 
precisely at the time they appear most irksome, it is most neces- 
sary he should obey, so a nation which means to conduct itself 

1 See note 1st. in Addenda. 



LECT. I.] POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 21 

wisely, must establish authority over itself, vested either in kings, 
councils, or laws, which it must resolve to obey, even at times 
when the law or authority appears irksome to the body of the 
people, or injurious to certain masses of it. And this kind of 
national law has hitherto been only judicial ; contented, that is* 
with an endeavour to prevent and punish violence and crime ; but, 
as we advance in our social knowledge, we shall endeavour to 
make our government paternal as well as judicial ; that is, to 
establish such laws and authorities as may at once direct us in our 
occupations, protect us against our follies, and visit us in our dis- 
tresses : a government which shall repress dishonesty, as now it 
punishes theft ; which shall show how the discipline of the masses 
may be brought to aid the toils of peace, as discipline of the masses 
has hitherto knit the sinews of battle ; a government which shall 
have its soldiers of the ploughshare as well as its soldiers of the 
sword, and which shall distribute more proudly its golden crosses 
of industry — golden as the glow of the harvest, than now it grants 
its bronze crosses of honour — bronzed with the crimson of blood. 
I have not, of course, time to insist on the nature or details of 
government of this kind ; only I wish to plead for your several 
and future consideration of this one truth, that the notion of 
Discipline and Interference lies at the very root of all human pro- 
gress or power ; that the " Let alone" principle is, in all things 
which man has to do with, the principle of death ; that it is ruin 
to him t certain and total, if he lets his land alone — if he lets his 
fellow-men alone — if he lets his own soul alone. That his whole 
life, on the contrary, must, if it is healthy life, be continually one 
of ploughing and pruning, rebuking and helping, governing and 
punishing ; and that therefore it is only in the concession of some 
great principle of restraint and interference in national action that 
he can ever hope to find the secret of protection against national 
degradation. I believe that the masses have a right to claim edu- 
cation from their government ; but only so far as they acknow- 



22 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. X. 

/edge the duty of yielding obedience to their government. I 
believe they have a right to claim employment from their govern- 
ors ; but only so far as they yield to the governor the direction 
and discipline of their labour ; and it is only so far as they grant 
to the men whom they may set over them the father's authority 
to check the childishness of national fancy, and direct the way- 
wardness of national energy, that they have a right to ask that 
none of their distresses should be unrelieved, none of their weak- 
nesses unwatched; and that no grief, nor nakedness, nor peril 
should exist for them, against which the father's hand was not 
outstretched, or the father's shield uplifted. 1 

Now, I have pressed this upon you at more length than is need- 
ful or proportioned to our present purposes of inquiry, because I 
would not for the first time speak to you on this subject of politi- 
cal economy without clearly stating what I believe to be its 
first grand principle. But its bearing on the matter in hand is 
chiefly to prevent you from at once too violently dissenting 
from me when what I may state to you as advisable economy 
in art appears to imply too much restraint or interference with the 
freedom of the patron or artist. We are a little apt, though on 

1 Compare "Wordsworth's Essay on the Poor-Law Amendment Bill. I 
quote one important passage : — But, if it be not safe to touch the abstract 
question of man's right in a social state to help himself even in the last ex- 
tremity, may we not still contend for the duty of a Christian government, 
standing in loco parentis towards all its subjects, to make such effectual provi- 
sion that no one shall be in danger of perishing either through the neglect or 
harshness of its legislation ? Or, waiving this, is it not indisputable that the 
claim of the State to the allegiance, involves the protection of the subject ? 
And, as all rights in one party impose a correlative duty upon another, it fol- 
lows that the right of the State to require the services of its members, even 
to the jeoparding of their lives in the common defence, establishes a right in 
the people (not to be gainsaid by utilitarians and economists) to public sup- 
port when, from any cause, they may be unable to support themselves."— 
(See note 2nd, in Addenda.) 



LECT. I.] POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 23 

the whole a prudent nation, to act too immediately on out 
impulses, even in matters merely commercial; much more in 
those involving continual appeals to our fancies. How far, there- 
fore, the proposed systems or restraints may be advisable, it is for 
you to judge ; only I pray you not to be offended with them 
merely because they are systems and restraints. Do you at all 
recollect that interesting passage of Carlyle, in which he com- 
pares, in this country and at this day, the understood and 
commercial value of man and horse ; and in which he wonders 
that the horse, with its inferior brains and its awkward hoofiness, 
instead of handiness, should be always worth so many tens or 
scores of pounds in the market, while the man, so far from always 
commanding his price in the market, would often be thought to 
confer a service on the community by simply killing himself out 
of their way? Well. Carlyle does not answer his own question, 
because he supposes we shall at once see the answer. The value 
of the horse consists simply in the fact of your being able to put 
a bridle on him. The value of the man consists precisely in the 
same thing. If you can bridle him, or which is better, if he can 
bridle himself he will be a valuable creature directly. Otherwise, 
in a commercial point of view, his value is either nothing, or acci- 
dental only. Only, of course, the proper bridle of man is not a 
leathern one; what kind of texture it is rightly made of, we find 
from that command, "Be ye not as the horse or as the mule 
which have no understanding, whose mouths must be held in 
with bit and bridle." You are not to be without the reins, 
indeed; but they are to be of another kind; "I will guide thee 
with mine Eye." So the bridle of man is to be the Eye of God ; 
aud if he rejects that guidance, then the next best for him is the 
horse's and the mule's, which have no understanding; and if 
he rejects that, and takes the bit fairly in his teeth, then there 
is nothing more left for him than the blood that comes out of the 
city, up to the horsebridles. 



24 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. j_LECT. I. 

Quitting, however, at last these general and serious laws of 
government — or rather bringing them down to our own business 
in hand — we have to consider three points of discipline in that 
particular branch of human labour which is concerned, not with 
procuring of food, but the expression of emotion; we have to 
consider respecting art; first, how to apply our labour to it; then 
how to accumulate or preserve the results of labour ; and then, 
how to distribute them. But since in art the labour which we 
have to employ is the labour of a particular class of men — men 
who have special genius for the business, we have not only 
to consider how to apply the labour, but first of all how to 
produce the labourer; and thus the question in this particu- 
lar case becomes fourfold : first, how to get your man of 
genius ; then, how to employ your man of genius ; then, how 
to accumulate and preserve his work in tl^e greatest quantity; 
and lastly, how to distribute his work to the best national advan- 
tage. Let us take up these questions in succession. 

I. Discovert. — How are we to get our men of genius : that is 
to say, by what means may we produce among us, at any given 
time, the greatest quantity of effective art-intellect ? A wide ques- 
tion, you say, involving an account of all the best means of art 
education. Yes, but I do not mean to go into the consideration of 
those ; I want only to state the few principles which lie at the 
foundation of the matter. Of these, the first is that you have 
always to find your artist, not to make him ; you can't manufacture 
him, any more than you can manufacture gold. You can find 
him, and refine him : you dig him out as he lies nugget-fashion in 
the mountain-stream ; you bring him home ; and you make him 
into current coin, or household plate, but not one grain of him can 
you originally produce. A certain quantity of art-intellect is born 
annually in every nation, greater or less according to the nature 
aud cultivation of the nation, or race of men ; but a perfectly fixed 



LECT. I.] I. DISCOVERY. 



25 



quantity annually, not increasable by one grain. You mav lose 
it, or you may gather it; you may let it lie loose in the ravine, 
and buried in the sands, or you may make kings' thrones of it, and 
overlay temple gates with it, as you choose ; but the best you can 
do with it is always merely sifting, melting, hammering, purifyino- 
—never creating. And there is another thing notable about this 
artistical gold ; not only is it limited in quantity, but in use. You 
need not make thrones or golden gates with it unless you like, but 
assuredly you can't do anything else with it. You can't make 
knives of it, nor armour, nor railroads. The gold won't cut you, 
and it won't carry you : put it to a mechanical use, and you destroy 
it at once. It is quite true that in the greatest artists, their proper 
artistical faculty is united with every other; and you mav make 
use of the other faculties, and let the artistical one lie dormant. 
For aught I know there may be two or three Leonardo da Yincis 
employed at this moment in your harbours and railroads : but von 
are not employing their Leonardesque or golden faculty there, you 
are only oppressing and destroying it, And the artistical gift in 
average men is not joined with others; your born painter, if you 
don't make a painter of him, won't be a first-rate merchant, or 
lawyer ; at all events, whatever he turns out, his own special gift 
is unemployed by you ; and in no wise helps him in that other, 
business. So here you have a certain quantity of a particular sort 
of intelligence, produced for you annually by providential laws, 
which you can only make use of by setting it to its own proper 
work, and which any attempt to use otherwise involves the 
dead loss of so much human energy. Well then, supposing w « 
wish to employ it, how is it to be best discovered and re- 
fined. It is easily enough discovered. To wish to emplov 
it is to discover it. All that you need is, a school of trial 1 in 
every important town, in which those idle farmers' lads whom 
their masters never can keep out of mischief, and those stupid 
1 See note 3d. in Addenda. 



26 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. 1 

tailors* 'prentices who are always stitching the sleeves in wrong 
way upwards, may have a try at this other trade ; only this school 
of trial must not be entirely regulated by formal laws of art 
education, but must ultimately be the workshop of a good master 
painter, who will try the lads with one kind of art and another, 
till he finds out what they are fit for. Next, after your trial 
school, you want your easy and secure employment, which is the 
matter of chief importance. For, even on the present system, the 
boys who have really intense art capacity, generally make painters 
of themselves; but then, the best half of their early energy is 
lost in the battle of life. Before a good painter can get employ- 
ment, his mind has always been embittered, and his genius dis- 
torted. A common mind usually stoops, in plastic chill, to what- 
ever is asked of it, and scrapes or daubs its way complacently into 
public favour. 1 But your great men quarrel with you, and you 
revenge yourselves by starving them for the first half of theii 
lives. Precisely in the degree in which any painter possesses 
original genius, is at present the increase of moral certainty that 
during his early years he will have a hard battle to fight ; and 
that just at the time when his conceptions ought to be full and 
happy, his temper gentle, and his hopes enthusiastic — just at that 
most critical period, his heart is full of anxieties and household 
cares ; he is chilled by disappointments, and vexed by injustice ; 
he becomes obstinate in his errors, no less than in his virtues, 
and the arrows of his aims are blunted, as the reeds of his trust 
are broken. 

What we mainly want, therefore, is a means of sufficient and 
uu agitated employment : not holding out great prizes for which 
young painters are to scramble ; but furnishing all with adequate 
support, and opportunity to display such power as they possess 
without rejection or mortification. I need not say that the best 

1 See note 4th, in Addenda. 



LECT. I.J I. DISCOVERY. 2*7 

field of labour of this kind would be presented by tbe constant 
progress of public works involving various decorations ; and we 
will presently examine what kind of public works may thus, ad- 
vantageously for tbe nation, be in constant progress. But a more 
important matter even than this of steady employment, is the 
kind of criticism with which you, the public, receive the works of 
the young men submitted to you. You may do much harm by 
indiscreet praise and by indiscreet blame ; but remember, the 
chief harm is always done by blame. It stands to reason that a 
young man's work cannot be perfect. It must be more or less 
ignorant; it must be more or less feeble; it is likely that it may 
be more or less experimental, and if experimental, here and there 
mistaken. If, therefore, you allow yourself to launch out into 
sudden barking at the first faults you see, the probability is that 
you are abusing the youth for some defect naturally and inevitably 
belonging to that stage of his progress ; and that you might jusl 
as rationally find fault with a child for not being as prudent as ? 
privy councillor, or with a kitten for not being as grave as a cat. 
But there is one fault which you may be quite sure is unnecessary. 
and therefore a real and blameable fault: that is haste, involving 
negligence. Whenever you see that a young man's work is either 
bold or slovenly, then you may attack it firmly ; sure of being 
right. If his work is bold, it is insolent; repress his insolence : 
if it is slovenly, it is indolent ; repress his indolence. So long as 
he works in that dashing or impetuous way, the best hope for him 
is in your contempt : and it is only by the fact of his seeming not 
to seek your approbation that you may conjecture he deserves it. 
But if he does deserve it, be sure that you give it him, else you 
not only run a chance of driving him from the right road by want 
of encouragement, but you deprive yourselves of the happiest pri- 
vilege you will ever have of rewarding his labour. For it is only 
the young who can receive much reward from men's praise : the 
old. when they are great, get too far beyond and above you tc 



28 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [l/ECT. I 

care what you think of them. You may urge them then witfc 
sympathy, and surround them then with acclamation ; but thev 
will doubt your pleasure, and despise jour praise. You might 
have cheered them in their race through the asphodel meadows 
of their youth ; you might have brought the proud, bright scarlet 
into their faces, if you had but cried once to them "Well done," 
as they dashed up to the first goal of their early ambition. But 
now, their pleasure is in memory, and their ambition is in heaven. 
They can be kind to you, but you never more can be kind to 
them. You may be fed with the fruit and fulness of their old 
age, but you were as the nipping blight to them in their blossom- 
ing, and your praise is only as the warm winds of autumn to the 
dying branches. 

There is one thought still, the saddest of all, bearing on this 
withholding of early help. It is possible, in some noble natures, 
that the warmth and the affections of childhood may remain un- 
chilled, though unanswered ; and that the old man's heart may 
still be capable of gladness, when the long-withheld sympathy is 
given at last. But in these noble natures it nearly always hap- 
pens, that the chief motive of earthly ambition has not been to 
give delight to themselves, but to their parents. Every noble 
youth looks back, as to the chiefest jcv v T h:eh this World's honour 
ever gave him, to the moment when first he saw his father's eyes 
flash with pride, and his mother turn away her head, lest ho 
should take her tears for tears of sorrow. Even the lover's jor, 
when some worthiness of his is acknowledged before his mistress, 
is not so great as that, for it is not so pure — the desire to exalt 
himself in her eyes mixes with that of giving her delight ; but he 
does not need to exalt himself in his parents' eyes : it is with the 
pure hope of giving them pleasure that he comes to tell them 
what he has done, or what has been said of him ; and therefore 
he has a purer pleasure of his own. And this purest and best of 
rewards you keep from him if you can : you feed him in his 



LECT. I.] I. DISCOVERT. 29 

tender youth with ashes and dishonour ; and then you come to 
him, obsequious, but too late, with your sharp laurel crown, the 
dew all dried from off its leaves ; and you thrust it into his languid 
hand, and he looks at you wistfully. What shall he do with it? 
What can he do, but go and lay it on his mother's grave ? 

Ihus, then, you see that you have to provide for your young 
men : first, the searching or discovering school ; then the calm 
employment ; then the justice of praise : one thing more you have 
to do for them in preparing them for full service — namely, to 
make, in the noble sense of the word, gentlemen of them ; that is 
to say, to take care that their minds receive such training, that in 
all they paint they shall see and feel the noblest things. I am 
sorry to say, that of all parts of an artist's education this is the 
most neglected anions; us ; and that even where the natural taste 
and feeling of the youth have been pure and true, where there 
was the right stuff in him to make a gentleman of, you may too 
frequently discern some jarring rents in his mind, and elements of 
degradation in his treatment of subject, owing to want of gentle 
training, and of the liberal influence of literature. This is quite 
visible in our greatest artists, even in men like Turner and Gains- 
borough ; while in the common grade of our second-rate painters 
the evil attains a pitch which is far too sadly manifest to need my 
dwelling upon it. Now, no branch of art economy is more im- 
portant than that of making the intellect at your disposal pure as 
well as powerful ; so that it may always gather for you the sweet- 
est and fairest things. The same quantity of labour from the same 
man's hand, will, according as you have trained him, produce a 
lovely and useful work, or a base and hurtful one; and depend 
upon it, whatever value it may possess, by reason of the painter's 
skill, its chief and final value, to any nation, depends upon its 
being able to exalt and refine, as well as to please ; and that the 
picture which most truly deserves the name of an art-treasure, is 
that which has been painted by a good man. 



30 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. I. 

You cannot but see how far this would lead, if I were to 
enlarge upon it. I must take it up as a separate subject some 
other time : only noticing at present that no money could be 
better spent by a nation than in providing a liberal and disci- 
plined education for its painters, as they advance into the critical 
period of their youth ; and that also, a large part of their powei 
during life depends upon the kind of subjects which you, the pub- 
lic, ask them for, and therefore the kind of thoughts with which 
you require them to be habitually familiar. I shall have more to 
say on this head when we come to consider what employment 
they should have in public buildings. 

There are many other points of nearly as much importance as 
these, to be explained with reference to the development of 
genius ; but I should have to ask you to come and hear six lec- 
tures instead of two if I were to go into their detail. For in- 
stance, I have not spoken of the way in which you ought to look 
for those artificers in various manual trades, who, without possess- 
ing the order of genius which you would desire to devote to 
higher purposes, yet possess wit, and humour, and sense of colour, 
and fancy for form — all commercially valuable as quantities of 
intellect, and all more or less expressible in the lower arts of iron- 
work, pottery, decorative sculpture, and such like. But these 
details, interesting as they are, I must commend to your own con- 
sideration, or leave for some future inquiry. I want just now 
only to set the bearings of the entire subject broadly before you, 
with enough of detailed illustration to make it intelligible ; and 
therefore I must quit the first head of it here, and pass to the 
second, namely, how best to employ the genius we discover. A 
certain quantity of able hands and heads being placed at our dis- 
posal, what shall we most advisably set them upon ? 

II. Application. — There are three main points the economist 
has to attend to in this. 



f.ECT. I.] II. APPLICATION. 31 

First, To set his men to various work. 

Secondly, To easy work. 

Thirdly, to lasting work. 

I shall briefly touch on the first two, for I want to arrest jou! 
attention on the last. 

I say first, to various work. Supposing you have two men ot 
equal power as landscape painters — and both of them have an 
hour at your disposal. You would not set them both to paint the 
same piece of landscape. You would, of course, rather have two 
subjects than a. repetition of one. 

Well, supposing them sculptors, will not the same rule hold ? 
You naturally conclude at once that it will ; but you will have 
hard work to convince your modern architects of that. They 
will put twenty men to work, to carve twenty capitals ; and all 
shall be the same. If I could show you the architects' yards in 
England just now, all open at once, perhaps you might see a 
thousand clever men, all employed in carving the same design. 
Of the degradation and deathfulness to the art-intellect of the 
country involved" in such a habit, I have more or less been led to 
apeak before now; but I have not hitherto marked its definite 
tendency to increase the price of work, as such. When men are 
employed continually in carving the same ornaments, they get 
into a monotonous and methodical habit of labour — precisely cor- 
respondent to that in which they would break stones, or paint 
house-walls. Of course, what they do so constantly, they do 
easily ; and if you excite them temporarily by an increase of 
wages you may get much work done by them in a little time. 
But, unless so stimulated, men condemned to a monotonous exer- 
tion, work — and always, by the laws of human nature, must 
work — only at a tranquil rate, not producing by any means a 
maximum result in a given time. But if you allow them to vary 
their designs, and thus interest their heads and hearts in what 
they are doing, you will find them become eager, first, to get their 



32 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. T. 

ideas expressed, and then to finish the expression of them ; and 
the mcral energy thus brought to bear on the matter quickens, 
and therefore cheapens, the production in a most important 
iegree. Sir Thomas Deane, the architect of the new Museum at 
Oxford, told me, as I passed through Oxford on my way here, that 
he found that, owing to this cause alone, capitals of various design 
could be executed cheaper than capitals of similar design (the 
amount of hand labour in each being the same) by about 30 pei 
cent. 

Well, that is the first way, then, in which you will employ your 
intellect well ; and the simple observance of this plain rule of po- 
litical economy will effect a noble revolution in your architecture, 
such as you cannot at present so much as conceive. Then the 
second way in which we are to guard against w T aste is by setting 
our men to the easiest, and therefore the quickest, work which 
will answer the purpose. Marble, for instance, lasts quite as long 
as granite, and is much softer to work ; therefore, when you get 
hold of a good sculptor, give him marble to carve — not granite. 
That, you say, is obvious enough. Yes ; but it is not so obvious 
how much of your workmen's time you waste annually in making 
them cut glass, after it has got hard, when you ought to make 
them mould it while it is soft. It is not so obvious how much 
expense you waste in cutting diamonds and rubies, which are the 
hardest things you can find, into shapes that mean nothing, when 
the same men might be cutting sandstone and freestone into 
shapes that mean something. It is not so obvious how much of 
the artists' time in Italy you waste, by forcing them to make 
wretched little pictures for you out of crumbs of stone glued 
together at enormous cost, when the tenth of the time would 
make good and noble pictures for you out of water-colour. I 
could 2:0 on giving you almost numberless instances of this great 
commercial mistake; but I should only weary and confuse you. 
I therefore commend also this head of our subject to your own 



LECT. I.] II. APPLICATION. 33 

meditation, and proceed to the last I named — the last I shall task 
your patience with to-night. You know we are now considering 
how to apply our genius; and we were to do it as economists, in 
three ways: — 

To various work ; 

To easy work ; 

To lasting work. 

This lasting of the work, then, is our final question. 

Many of you may, perhaps, remember that Michael Angelo was 
once commanded by Pietro di Medici to mould a statue out of 
snow, and that he obeyed the command .* I am glad, and we 
have all reason to be glad, that such a fancy ever came into the 
mind of the unworthy prince, and for this cause : that Pietro di 
Medici then gave, at the period of one great epoch of consum- 
mate power in the arts, the perfect,' accurate, and intensest possible 
type of tho greatest error which nations and princes can commit, 
respecting the power of genius entrusted to their guidance. You 
had there, observe, the strongest genius in the most perfect obe- 
dience ; capable of iron independence, yet wholly submissive to the 
patron's will; at once the most highly accomplished and the most 
original, capable of doing as much as man could do, in any direc- 
tion that man could ask. And its governor, and guide, and 
patron sets it to build a statue in snow — to put itself into the ser- 
vice of annihilation — to make a cloud of itself, and pass away from 
the earth. 

Now this, so precisely and completely done by Pietro di Medici, 
is what we are all doing, exactly in the degree in which we direct 
the genius under our patronage to work in more or less perish- 
able materials. So far as we induce painters to work in fading 
colours, or architects to build with imperfect structure, or in 
any other way consult only immediate ease and cheapness in the 

* See the noble passage on this tradition in " Casa Guidi "Windows." 

2 



34 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. 1 

production of what we want, to the exclusion of provident thought 
as to its permanence and serviceableness in after ages ; so far we 
are forcing our Michael Angelos to carve in snow. The first duty 
of the economist in art is, to see that no intellect shall thus glitter 
merely in the manner of hoar-frost ; but that it shall be well vitri- 
fied, like a painted window, and shall be set so between shafts of 
stone and bands of iron, that is shall bear the sunshine upon it, 
and send the sunshine through it, from generation to generation. 

] can conceive, however, some political economist to interrupt 
me here, and say, " If you make your art wear too well, you will 
soon have too much of it ; you will throw your artists quite out of 
work. Better allow for a little wholesome evanescence — benefi- 
cent destruction : let each age provide art for itself, or we shall 
soon have so many good pictures that we shall not know what to 
do with them." 

Remember, my dear hearers, who are thus thinking, that politi- 
cal economy, like every other subject, cannot be dealt with effec- 
tively if we try to solve two questions at a time instead of one. It 
is one question, how to get plenty of a thing ; and another, 
whether plenty of it will be good for us. Consider these two 
matters separately; never confuse yourself by interweaving one 
with the other. It is one question, how to treat your fields so as 
to get a good harvest ; another, whether you wish to have a good 
harvest, or would rather like to keep up the price of corn. It is 
one question, how to graft your trees so as to grow most apples ; 
and quite another, whether having such a heap of apples in the 
storeroom will not make them all rot. 

Now, therefore, that we are talking only about grafting and 
growing, pray do not vex yourselves with thinking what you are 
to do with the pippins. It may be desirable for us to have much 
art, or little — we will examine that by and by; but just now, let 
us keep to the simple consideration how to get plenty of good art if 
we want it. Perhaps it might be just as well that a man of mode- 



LECT. I.] II. APPLICATION. 35 

rate income should be able to possess a good picture, as that any 
work of real merit should cost 500/. or 1000/.; at all events, it 
is certainly one of the branches of political economy to ascertain 
how, if we like, we can get things in quantities — plenty of corn, 
plenty of wine, plenty of gold, or plenty of pictures. 

It has just been said, that the first great secret is to produce work 
that will last. Now, the conditions of work lasting are twofold : 
it must not only be in materials that will last, but it must be itself 
of a quality that will last — it must be good enough to bear the test 
of time. If it is not good, we shall tire of it quickly, and throw 
it aside — we shall have no pleasure in the accumulation of it. So 
that the first question of a good art-economist respecting any work 
is, Will it lose its flavour by keeping ? It may be very amusing 
now, and look much like a work of genius. But what will be its 
value a hundred years hence ? 

You cannot always ascertain this. You may get what you fancy 
to be work of the best quality, and yet find to your astonishment 
that it won't keep. But of one thing you may be sure, that art 
which is produced hastily will also perish hastily ; and that what 
is cheapest to you now, is likely to be dearest in the end. 

I am sorry to say, the great tendency of this age is to expend its 
genius in perishable art of this kind, as if it were a triumph to 
burn its thoughts away in bonfires. There is a vast quantity of 
intellect and of labour consumed annually in our cheap illustrated 
publications ; you triumph in them ; and you think it so grand a 
thing to get so many woodcuts for a penny. Why, woodcuts? 
penny and all, are as much lost to you as if you had invested your 
money in gossamer. More lost, for the gossamer could only tickle 
your face, and glitter in your eyes ; it could not catch your feet 
and trip you up : but the bad art can, and does ; for you can't like 
good woodcuts as long as you look at the bad ones. If we were 
at this moment to come across a Titian woodcut, or a Durer wood- 
cut, we should not like it; — those of us at least who are accustomed 



36 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lkCT. I 

to the cheap work of the day. We don't like, and c&n't like, thai 
long; but when we are tired of one bad cheap thing, we throw it 
aside and buy another bad cheap thing ; and so keep looking at 
bad things all our lives. Now, the very men who do all that quick 
bad work for us are capable of doing perfect work. Only, perfect 
work can't be hurried, and therefore it can't be cheap beyond a 
certain point. But suppose you pay twelve times as much as you 
do now, and you have one woodcut for a shilling instead of twelve ; 
and the one woodcut for a shilling is as good as art can be, so that 
you will never tire of looking at it ; and is struck on good paper 
with good ink, so that you will never wear it out by handling it ; 
while you are sick of your penny each cuts by the end of the week 
and have torn them mostly in half too. Isn't your shilling's wortn 
the best bargain ? 

It is not, however, only in getting prints or woodcuts of the best 
kind that you will practise economy. There is a certain quality 
about an original drawing which you cannot get in a woodcut, and 
the best part of the genius of any man is only expressible in ori- 
ginal work, whether with pen and ink — pencil or colours. This is 
not always the case ; but in general the best men are those who 
can only express themselves on paper or canvass : and you will, 
therefore, in the long run, get most for your money by buying 
original work ; proceeding on the principle already laid down, that 
the best is likely to be the cheapest in the end. Of course, origina 1 
Avork cannot be produced under a certain cost. If you want a 
man to make you a drawing which takes him six days, you must, 
at all events, keep him for six days in bread and water, fire and 
lodging ; that is the lowest price at which he can do it for yon, but 
that is not very dear : and the best bargain which can possibly be 
made honestly in art — the very ideal of a cheap purchase to the 
purchaser — is the original work of a great man fed for as many 
days as are necessary on bread and water, or perhaps we may say 
with as many onions as will keep him in good humour. That is 



LKCT. I.J II. APPLICATION". 3*1 

the way by which you will always get most for your money ; no 
mechanical multiplication or ingenuity of commercial arrangements 
will ever get you a better penny's worth of art than that. 

Without, however, pushing our calculations quite to this prison- 
discipline extreme, we may lay it down as a rule in art-economy, 
that original work is, on the whole, cheapest and best worth having. 
But precisely in proportion to the value of it as a production, 
becomes the importance of having it executed in permanent mate- 
rials. And here we come to note the second main error of the 
day, that we not only ask our workmen for bad art, but we make 
them put it into bad substance. "We have, for example, put a great 
quantity of genius, w T ithin the last twenty years, into water-colour 
drawing, and we have done this with the most reckless disregard 
whether either the colours or the paper will stand. In most instan- 
ces, neither will. By accident, it may happen that the colours in 
a ghen drawing have been of good quality, and its paper uninjured 
by chemical processes. But you take not the least care to ensure 
these being so; I have myself seen the most destructive changes 
take place in water-colour drawings within twenty years after they 
were painted ; and from all I can gather respecting the recklessness 
of modern paper manufacture, my belief is, that though you may 
still handle an Albert Durer engraving, two hundred years old, 
fearlessly, not one-half of that time will have passed over your 
modern water-coloune, before most of them will be reduced to mere 
white or brown rags; and your descendants, twitching them con- 
temptuously into fragments between finger and thumb, will mutter 
against you, half in scorn and half in anger, "Those wretched 
nineteenth century people ! they kept vapouring and fuming about 
the world, doing what they called business, and they couldn't make 
a sheet of paper that wasn't rotten." And note that this is no 
unimportant portion of your art economy at this time. Your 
water-colour painters are becoming every day capable of express- 
ing greater and better things; and their material is espcciallv 



38 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. I 

adapted to the turn of your best artists' minds. The value which 
you could accumulate in work of this kind would soon become a 
most important item in the national art-wealth, if only you would 
take the little pains necessary to secure its permanence. I am 
inclined to think, myself, that water-colour ought not to be used 
on paper at all, but only on vellum, and then, if properly taken 
care of, the drawing would be almost imperishable. Still, paper is 
a much more convenient material for rapid, work; and it is an 
infinite absurdity not to secure the goodness of its quality, when 
we could do so without the slightest trouble. Among the many 
favours which I am going to ask from our paternal government 
when we get it, will be that it will supply its little boys with good 
paper. You have nothing to do but to let the government esta- 
blish a paper manufactory, under the superintendence of any of our 
leading chemists, who should be answerable for the safety and 
completeness of all the processes of the manufacture. The 
government stamp on the corner of your sheet of drawing-paper, 
made in the perfect way, should cost you a shilling, which would 
add something to the revenue ; and when you bought a water- 
colour drawing for fifty or a hundred guineas, you would have 
merely to look in the corner for your stamp, and pay your extra 
shilling for the security that your hundred guineas were given 
really foi a drawing, and not for a coloured rag. There need be 
no monopoly or restriction in the matter; let the paper manu- 
facturers compete with the government, and if people like to save 
their shilling, and take their chance, let them; only, the artist and 
purchaser might then be sure of good material, if they liked, and 
row they cannot be. 

I should like also to have a government colour manufactory ; 
though that is not so necessary, as the quality of colour is more 
within the artist's power of testing, and I have no doubt that any 
painter may get permanent colour from the respectable manufac- 
turers, if he chooses. I will not attempt to follow the subject out 



LECT. I.J II. APPLICATION. 39 

at all as it respects architecture, and our methods of modern 
building; respecting which I have had occasion to speak before 
now. 

But I cannot pass without some brief notice our habit — con- 
tinually, as it seems to me, gaining strength — of putting a large 
quantity of thought and work, annually, into things which are 
either in their nature necessarily perishable, as dress ; or else into 
compliances with the fashion of the day, into things not necessarily 
perishable, as plate. I am afraid almost the first idea of a young rich 
couple setting up house in London, is, that they must have new- 
plate. Their father's plate may be very handsome, but the fashion 
is changed. They will have a new service from the leading manu- 
facturer, and the old plate, except a few apostle spoons, and a cup 
which Charles the Second drank a health into their pretty ances- 
tress, is sent to be melted down, and made up with new T flourishes 
and fresh lustre. Now, so long as this is the case — so long, ob- 
serve, as fashion has influence on the manufacture of plate — so 
long you cannot have a goldsmith's art in this country. Do you 
suppose any workman worthy the name will put his brains into a 
cup or an urn, which he knows is to go to the melting pot in half 
a score years ? He will not ; you don't ask or expect it of him. 
You ask of him nothing but a little quick handicraft — a clever 
twist of a handle here, and a foot there, a convolvulus from the 
newest school of design, a pheasant from Landseer's game cards ; 
a couple of sentimental figures for supporters, in the style of the 
signs of insurance offices, then a clever touch with the burnisher, 
and there's your epergne, the admiration of all the footmen at the 
wedding-breakfast, and the torment of some unfortunate youth 
who cannot see the pretty girl opposite to him, through its tyran- 
nous branches. 

But you don't suppose that that's goldsmith's work? Gold- 
smith's work is made to last, and made with the men's whole 
heart and soul in it; true goldsmith's w T ork, when it exists, is 



40 • POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. I. 

generally the means of education of the greatest painters and 
sculptors of the day. Francia was a goldsmith ; Francia was nut 
his own name, but that of his master the jeweller; and he signed 
his pictures almost always, " Francia, the goldsmith," for love of 
his master ; Ghirlandajo was a goldsmith, and w 7 as the master of 
Michael Angelo ; Verrocchio was a goldsmith, and was the master 
of Leonardo da Vinci. Ghiberti was a goldsmith, and beat out 
the bronze gates which Michael Angelo said might serve for gates 
of Paradise. 1 But if ever you w r ant w r ork like theirs again, you 
must keep it, though it should have the misfortune to become old 
fashioned. You must not break it up, nor melt it any more. 
There is no economy in that ; you could not easily w T aste intellect 
more grievously. Xature may melt her goldsmith's work at every 
sunset if she chooses ; and beat it out into chased bars again at 
every sunrise ; but you must not. The way to have a truly noble 
service of plate, is to keep adding to it, not melting it. At everv 
marriage, and at every birth, get a new piece of gold or silver if 
you will, but with noble workmanship on it, done for all time, and 
put it among your treasures ; that is one of the chief things which 
gold was made for, and made incorruptible for. When we know 
a little more of political economy, w T e shall find that none but par- 
tially savage nations need, imperatively, gold for their currency; 8 
but gold has been given us, among other things, that we might 
put beautiful work into its imperishable splendour, and that the 

1 Several reasons may account for the fact that goldsmith's work is so 
wholesome for young artists; first, that it gives great firmness of hand to 
deal for some time with a solid substance ; again, that it induces caution and 
steadiness — a boy trusted with chalk and paper suffers an immediate temp- 
tation to scrawl upon it and play with it, but he dares not scrawl on gold, 
and he cannot play with it ; and, lastly, that it gives great delicacy and pre- 
cision of touch to work upon minute forms, and to aim at producing richness 
and finish of design correspondent to the preciousness of the material. 

2 See n->te in Addenda on the nature of property. 



LECT. I.j II. APPLICATION. <* 1 

artists who have the most wilful fancies may have a material which 
will drag out, and beat out, as their dreams require, and will hold 
itself together with fantastic tenacity, whatever rare and delicate 
service they set it upon. 

So here is one branch of decorative art in which rich people 
may indulge themselves unselfishly ; if they ask for good art in it, 
they may be sure in buying gold and silver plate that they are 
enforcing useful education on young artists. But there is another 
branch of decorative art in which I am sorry to say we cannot, at 
least under existing circumstances, indulge ourselves, with the hope 
of doing good to anybody, I mean the great and subtle art of dress. 

And here I must interrupt the pursuit of our subject for a mo- 
ment or two, in order to state one of the principles of political 
economy, which, though it is, I believe, now sufficiently under- 
stood and asserted by the leading masters of the science, is not yet, 
I grieve to say, acted upon by the plurality of those who have the 
management of riches. Whenever we spend money, w r e of course 
set people to work : that is the meaning of spending money ; w r e 
may, indeed, lose it without employing anybody ; but, whenever 
we spend it, we set a number of people to work, greater or less, 
of course, according to the rate of wages, but, in the long run, 
proportioned to the sum we spend. Well, your shallow people, 
because they see that however they spend money they are always 
employing somebody, and, therefore, doing some good, think and 
say to themselves, that it is all one how they spend it — that all 
their apparently selfish luxury is, in reality, unselfish, and is doing 
just as much good as if they gave all their money away, or per- 
haps more good ; and I have heard foolish people even declare it 
as a principle of political economy, that whoever invented a new 
want 1 conferred a good on the community. I have not words 
strong enough — at least I could not, without shocking you, use 

1 See note 5th in Addenda. 



42 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. 1. 

the words which would be strong enough — to express my estimate 
of the absurdity and the mischievousness of this popular fallacy. 
So, putting a great restraint upon myself, and using no hard words, 
I will simply try to state the nature of it, and the extent of its 
influence. 

Granted, that whenever we spend money for whatever purpose, 
we set people to work ; and passing by, for the moment, the 
question whether the work we set them to is all equally healthy 
and good for them, we will assume that whenever we spend a 
guinea we provide an equal number of people with healthy main- 
tenance for a given time. But, by the way in which we spend it, 
we entirely direct the labour of those people during that given 
time. ' We become their masters or mistresses, and we compel 
them to produce, within a certain period, a certain article. Now, 
that article may be a useful and lasting one, or it may be a useless 
and perishable one — it may be one useful to the whole community, 
or useful only to ourselves. And our selfishness and folly, or our 
virtue and prudence, are shown, not by our spending money, but 
by our spending it for the wrong or the right thing ; and we are wise 
and kind, not in maintaining a certain number of people for a given 
period, but only in requiring them to produce, during that period, 
the kind of things which shall be useful to society, instead of those 
which are only useful to ourselves. 

Thus, for instance : if you are a young lady, and employ a cer- 
tain number of sempstresses for a given time, in making a given 
number of simple and serviceable dresses, suppose, seven ; of which 
you can wear one yourself for half the winter, and give six away 
to poor girls who have none, you are spending your money unself- 
ishly. But if you employ the same number of sempstresses for the 
same number of days, in making four, or five, or six beautiful 
flounces for your own ball-dress — flounces which will clothe no 
one but yourself, and which you will yourself be unable to wear 
at more than one ball — you are employing your money selfishly. 



1 EOT. I.J II. APPLICATION. 4 J 

You have maintained, indeed, in each case, the same number of 
people ; but in the one case you have directed their labour to the 
service of the community ; in the other case you have consumed 
it wholly upon yourself. I don't say you are never to do so ; I 
don't say you ought not sometimes to think of yourselves onh, 
and to make yourselves as pretty as you can ; only do not confuse 
coquettishness with benevolence, nor cheat yourselves into think- 
ing that all the finery you can wear is so much put into the 
hungry mouths of those beneath you : it is not so ; it is what you 
yourselves, whether you will or no, must sometimes instinctively 
feel it to be — it is what those who stand shivering in the streets, 
forming a line to watch you as you step out of your carriages, 
know it to be ; those fine dresses do not mean that so much 
has been put into their mouths, but that so much has been 
taken out of their mouths. The real politico-economical signifi- 
cation of every one of those beautiful toilettes, is just this ; that 
you have had a certain number of people put for a certain number 
of days wholly under your authority, by the sternest of slave- 
masters, — hunger and cold ; and you have said to them, " I will 
feed you, indeed, and clothe you, and give you fuel for so many 
days ; but during those days you shall work for me only : your 
little brothers need clothes, but you shall make none for them : 
your sick friend needs clothes, but you shall make none for her : 
you yourself will soon need another, and a warmer dress ; but you 
shall make none for yourself. You shall make nothing but lace 
and roses for me ; for this fortnight to come, you shall work at 
the patterns and petals, and then I will crush and consume them 
away in an hour." You will perhaps answer — " It may not be 
particularly benevolent to do this, and we won't call it so ; but at 
any rate we do no wrong in taking their labour when we pay 
them their wages : if we pay for their work we have a right to 
it." No ; — a thousand times no. The labour which you have 
paid for, does indeed become, by the act of purchase, your own 



44 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. 1 

labour : you have bought the bauds and the time of those work 
ers ; they are, by right and justice, your own hands, your own 
time. But, have you a right to spend your own time, to work 
with your own hands, only for your own advantage ? — much 
more, when, by purchase, you have invested your own person 
with the strength of others ; and added to your own life, a part 
of the life of others ? You may, indeed, to a certain extent, use 
their labour for your delight; remember, I am making no gene- 
ral assertions against splendour of dress, or pomp of accessaries 
of life ; on the contrary, there are many reasons for thinking that 
we do not at present attach enough importance to beautiful dress, 
as one of the means of influencing general taste and character. 
But I do say, that you must weigh the value of what you ask 
these workers to produce for you in its own distinct balance ; that 
on its own worthiness or desirableness rests the question of your 
kindness, and not merely on the fact of your having employed 
people iu producing it : and I say farther, that as long as there 
are cold and nakedness in the land around you, so long there 
can be no question at all but that splendour of dress is a crime. 
In due time, when we have nothing better to set people to work 
at, it may be right to let them make lace and cut jewels ; but, as 
long as there are any who have no blankets for their beds, and 
no rags for their bodies, so long it is blanket-making and tailoring 
we must set people to work at — not lace. 

And it would be strange, if at any great assembly which, while 
it dazzled the young and the thoughtless, beguiled the gentler 
hearts that beat beneath the embroidery, with a placid sensation 
of luxurious benevolence — as if by all that they wore in wayward- 
ness of beauty, comfort had been first given to the distressed, and 
aid to the indigent ; it would be strange, I say, if, for a moment, 
the spirits of Truth and of Terror, which walk invisibly among the 
masques of the earth, would lift the dimness from our erring 
thoughts, and show us how — inasmuch as the sums exhausted for 



LECI. I.] POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 45 

that magnificence would have given back the failing breath to 
many an unsheltered outcast on moor and street — they who wear 
it have literally entered into partnership with Death ; and dressed 
themselves in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted not only 
from your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see — 
the angels do see — on those gay white dresses of yours, strange 
dark spots, and crjinson patterns that you knew not of — spots of 
the inextinguishable red that all the seas cannot wash away ; ves, 
and among the pleasant flowers that crown your fair heads, and 
glow on your wreathed hair, you would see that one weed was 
always twisted which no one thought of — the grass that grows on 
graves. 

It was not, however, this last, this clearest and most appal- 
ling view of our subject, that I intended to ask you to take this 
evening; only it is impossible to set any part of the matter in its 
true light, until we go to the root of it. But the point which it 
is our special business to consider is, not whether costliness of 
dress is contrary to charity ; but whether it is not contrary to 
mere worldly wisdom : whether, even supposing we knew that 
splendour of dress did not cost suffering or hunger, we might 
not put the splendour better in other things than dress. And, 
supposing our mode of dress were really graceful or beautiful, 
this might be a very doubtful question; for I believe true 
nobleness of dress to be an important means of education, as it 
certainly is a necessity to any nation which wishes to possess living 
art, concerned with portraiture of human nature. No good his- 
torical painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the 
dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful : and had it 
not been for the lovely and fantastic dressing of the 13th to 
the 16th centuries, neither French, nor Florentine, nor Venetian 
art could have risen to anything like the rank it reached. Still, 
even then, the best dressing was never the costliest ; and its effect 
depended much more on its beautiful and, in early times, 



46 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. I 

modest, arrangement, and on the simple and lovely masses of its 
colour, than on gorgeousness of clasp or embroidery. Whethei 
we can ever return to any of those more perfect types of form 
is questionable ; but there can be no question, that all the 
money we spend on the forms of dress at present worn, is, so 
far as any good purpose is concerned, wholly lost. Mind, in 
saying this, I reckon among good purposes the purpose which 
young ladies are said sometimes to entertain — of being mar- 
ried ; but they would be married quite as soon (and probably 
to wiser and better husbands) by dressing quietly as by dressing 
brilliantly; and- 1 believe it would only be needed to lay fairly 
and largely before them the real good which might be effected 
by the sums they spend in toilettes, to make them trust at once 
only to their bright eyes and braided hair for all the mischief 
they have a mind to. I wish we could, for once, get the 
statistics of a London season. There was much complaining talk 
in Parliament last week of the vast sum the nation has given for 
the best Paul Veronese in Venice — £14,000 : I wonder what the 
nation meanwhile has given for its ball-dresses ! Suppose we could 
see the London milliners' bills, simply for unnecessary breadths of 
slip and flounces, from April to July ; I wonder whether £14,000 
would cover them. But the breadths of slip and flounces are by 
this time as much lost and vanished as last year's snow; only they 
have done less good : but the Paul Veronese will last for centuries, 
if we take care of it; and yet we grumble at the price given for 
the painting, while no one grumbles at the price of pride. 

Time does not permit me to go into any farther illustration oi 
the various modes in which we build our statue out of snow, ami 
waste our labour on things that vanish. I must leave you to fol 
low out the subject for yourselves, as I said I should, and proceed, 
in our next lecture, to examine the two other branches of our sub- 
ject, namely, how to accumulate our art, and how to distribute it. 
But, in closing, as we have been much on the topic of good 



LECT. I.J II. APPLICATION. 47 

government, both of ourselves and others, let me just give you 
one more illustration of what it means, from that old art of which, 
next evening, I shall try to convince you that the value, both 
moral and mercantile, is greater than we usually suppose. 

One of the frescoes by Ambrozio Lorenzetti, in the town-hall 
of Siena, represents, by means of symbolical figures, the principles 
of Good Civic Government and of Good Government in general. 
The figure representing this noble Civic Government is enthroned, 
and surrounded by figures representing the Virtues, variously sup- 
porting or administering its authority. Now, observe what work 
is given to each of these virtues. Three winged ones — Faith, 
Hope, and Charity — surrounded the head of the figure, not in 
mere compliance with the common and heraldic laws of prece- 
dence among Virtues, such as we moderns observe habitually, but 
with peculiar purpose on the part of the painter. Faith, as thus 
represented, ruling the thoughts of the Good Governor, does not 
mean merely religious faith, understood in those times to be neces- 
sary to all persons — governed no less than governors — but it 
means the faith which enables work to be carried out steadily, in 
spite of adverse appearances and expediencies ; the faith in great 
principles, by which a civic ruler looks past all the immediate 
checks and shadows that would daunt a common man, knowing 
that what is rightly done will have a right issue, and holding his 
way in spite of pullings at his cloak and whisperings in his ear, 
enduring, as having in him a faith which is evidence of things un- 
seen. And Hope, in like manner, is here not the heavenward hope 
which ought to animate the hearts of all men ; but she attends upon 
Good Government, to show that all such government is expectant as 
well as conservative ; that if it ceases to be hopeful of better 
things, it ceases to be a wise guardian of present things : that it 
ought never, as long as the world lasts, to be wholly content with 
any existing state of institution or possession, but to be hopeful 
still of more wisdom and power; not clutching at it restlessly or 



48 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. I. 

hastily, but feeling that its real life consists in steady ascent fiom 
high to higher : conservative, indeed, and jealously conservative 
of old things, but conservative of them as pillars not as pinnacles 
— as aids, but not as Idols; and hopeful chiefly, and active, in 
times of national trial or distress, according to those first and 
notable words describing the queenly nation. " She riseth, while 
it is yet night" And again, the winged Charity which is atten- 
dant on Good Government has, in this fresco, a peculiar office. 
Can you guess what? K you consider the character of contest 
which so often takes place among kings for their crowns, and the 
selfish and tyrannous means they commonly take to aggrandize or 
secure their power, you will, perhaps, be surprised to hear that 
the office of Charity is to crown the King. And yet, if you think 
of it a little, you will see the beauty of the thought which sets her 
in this function : since in the first place, all the authority of a 
good governor should be desired by him only for the good of his 
people, so that it is only Love that makes him accept or guard his 
crown : in the second place, his chief greatness consists in the ex- 
ercise of this love, and he is truly to be revered only so far as his 
acts and thoughts are those of kindness; so that Love is the light 
of his crown, as well as the giver of it : lastly, because his strength 
depends on the affections of his people, and it is only their love 
which can securely crown him, and for ever. So that Love is the 
strength of his crown as well as the light of it. 

Then, surrounding the King, or in various obedience to him, 
appear the dependent virtues, as Fortitude, Temperance, Truth, 
and other attendant spirits, of all wdiich I cannot now give ac- 
count, wishing you only to notice the one to whom are entrusted 
the guidance and administration of the public revenues. Can you 
guess which it is likely to be ? Charity, you would have thought, 
should have something to do with the business; but not so, for 
she is too hot to attend carefully to it. Prudence, perhaps, you 
think of in the next place. No, she is too timid, and loses oppor- 



IECT. I.J II. APPLICATION. 42 

tunities in making up her mind. Can it be Liberality then? 
No : Liberality is entrusted with some small sums ; but she is a 
bad accountant, and is allowed no important place in the exche- 
quer. But the treasures are given in charge to a virtue of which 
we hear too little in modern times, as distinct from others; 
Magnanimity : largeness of heart : not softness or weakness of 
heart, mind you — but capacity of heart — the great measuring 
virtue, which weighs in heavenly balances all that may be given, 
and all that may be gained ; and sees how to do noblest things in 
noblest ways : which of two goods comprehends and therefore 
chooses the greatest : wmich of two personal sacrifices dares and 
accepts the largest: which, out of the avenues of beneficence, 
treads always that which opens farthest into the blue fields of 
futurity : that character, in fine, which, in those words taken by 
us at first for the description of a Queen among the nations, looks 
less to the present power than to the distant promise ; " Strength 
and honour are in her clothing, — and she shall rejoice itf time 

TO COME." 



60 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. TlECT. U 



LECTURE II. 

The heads of our subject which remain for our consideration 
this evening are, you will remember, the accumulation and the 
distribution of works of art. Our complete inquiry fell into four 
divisions — first, how to get our genius ; then, how to apply our 
genius; then, how to accumulate its results; and lastly, how to 
distribute them. We considered, last evening, how to discover 
and apply it ; — we have to-night to examine the modes of its 
preservation and distribution. 

And now, in the outset, it will be well to face that objection 
which we put aside a little while ago; namely, that perhaps it is 
not well to have a great deal of good art ; and that it should not 
be made too cheap. 

" Nay," I can imagine some of the more generous among yoiy, 
exclaiming, " we will not trouble you to disprove that objection ; 
of course it is a selfish and base one : good art, as well as other 
good things, ought to be made as cheap as possible, and put as far 
as we can within the reach of every body ." 

Pardon me, I am not prepared to admit that. I rather side 
with the selfish objectors, and believe that art ought not to be 
made cheap, beyond a certain point ; for the amount of pleasure 
that you can receive from any great work, depends wholly on the 
quantity of attention and energy of mind you can bring to bear 
upon it. Now, that attention and energy depend much more on 
the freshness of the thing than you would at all suppose ; unless 
you very carefully studied the movements of your own minds. If 
you see things of the same kind and of equal value very fre 



LECT. II.] HI. ACCUMULATION. 51 

quently, your reverence for them is infallibly diminished, your 
powers of attention get gradually wearied, and your interest and 
enthusiasm worn out ; and you cannot in that state bring to any 
given work the energy necessary to enjoy it. If, indeed, the- 
question were only between enjoying a great many pictures each a 
little, or one picture very much, the sum of enjoyment being in 
each case the same, you might rationally desire to possess rather 
the larger quantity, than the small ; both because one work of art 
always in some sort illustrates another, and because quantity 
diminishes the chances of destruction. But the question is not a 
merely arithmetical one of this kind. Your fragments of broken 
admirations will not, when they are put together, make up one 
whole admiration ; two and two, in this case, do not make four, 
nor anything like four. Your good picture, or book, or work of 
art of any kind, is always in some degree fenced and closed about 
with difficulty. You may think of it as of a kind of cocoa-nut, with 
very often rather an unseemly shell, but good milk and kernel 
inside. Now, if you possess twenty cocoa-nuts, and being thirsty, 
go impatiently from one to the other, giving only a single scratch 
with the point of your knife to the shell of each, you will get no 
milk from all the twenty. But if you leave nineteen of them 
alone, and give twenty cuts to the shell of one, you will get 
through it, and at the milk of it. And the tendency of the 
human mind is always to get tired before" it has made its twenty 
cuts ; and to try another nut ; and moreover, even if it has per- 
severance enough to crack its nuts, it is sure to try to eat too 
many, and so choke itself. Hence, it is wisely appointed for us 
that few of the things we desire can be had without considerable 
labour, and at considerable intervals of time. We cannot gene- 
rally get our dinner without working for it, and that gives us ap- 
petite for it ; we cannot get our holiday without waiting for it, 
and that gives us zest for it ; and we ought not to get our picture 
without paying for it, and that gives us a mind to look at it. 



52 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. II 

Nay, I will even go so far as to say, that we ought not to get 
books too cheaply. No book, I believe, is ever worth half so 
much to its reader as one that has been coveted for a year at a 
bookstall, and bought out of saved half-pence ; and perhaps a day 
or two's fasting. That's the way to get at the cream of a book. 
And I should say more on this matter, and protest as energetically 
as I could against the plague of cheap literature, with which we 
are just now afflicted, but that I fear your calling me to order, as 
being unpractical, because I don't quite see my way at present to 
making everybody fast for their books. But one may see that a 
thing is desirable and possible, even though one may not at once 
know the best way to it — and in my island of Barataria, when I 
get it well into order, I assure you no book shall be sold for less 
than a pound sterling ; if it can be published cheaper than that, 
the surplus shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects 
taxation in other directions ; only people really poor, who cannot 
pay the pound, shall be supplied with the books they want for 
nothing, in a certain limited quantity. I haven't made up my 
mind about the number yet, and there are several other points in 
the system yet unsettled; when they are all determined, if you 
will allow me, I will come and give you another lecture, on the 
political economy of literature. 1 

Meantime, returning to our immediate subject, I say to my gene- 
rous hearers, who want to shower Titians and Turners upon us, 
like falling leaves, " Pictures ought not to be too cheap ;" but in 
much stronger tone I would say to those who want to keep up the 
prices of pictorial property, that pictures ought not to be too dear, 
that is to say, not as dear as they are. For, as matters at present 
stand, it is wholly impossible for any man in the ordinary circum- 
stances of English life to possess himself of a piece of great art. 
A modern drawing of average merit, or a first-class engraving, 

1 See note 6th iD Addenda. 



LECT. II.] III. ACCUMULATION. 53 

may perhaps, not without some self-reproach, be purchased out ol 
his savings by a man of narrow income ; but a satisfactory exam- 
ple of first-rate art — master-hands' work — is wholly out of his 
reach. And we are so accustomed to look upon this as the natu- 
ral course and necessity of things, that we never set ourselves in 
any wise to diminish the evil ; and yet it is an evil perfectly capa 
ble of diminution. It is an evil precisely similar in kind to that 
which existed in the middle ages, respecting good books, and 
which everybody then, I suppose, thought as natural as we do now 
our small supply of good pictures. You could not then study the 
work of a great historian, or great poet, any more than you can 
now study that of a great painter, but at heavy cost. If you 
wanted a book, you had to get it written out for you, or to write 
it out for yourself. But printing came, and the poor man may 
read his Dante and his Homer ; and Dante and Homer are none 
the worse for that. But it is only in literature that private per- 
sons of moderate fortune can possess and study greatness : they 
can study at home no greatness in art ; and the object of that 
accumulation which we are at present aiming at, as our third 
object in political economy, is to bring great art in some degree 
within the reach of the multitude ; and, both in larger and more 
numerous galleries than we now possess, and by distribution, 
according to his wealth and wish, in each man's home, to render 
the influence of art somewhat correspondent in extent to that of 
literature. Here, then, is the subtle balance which your economist 
has to strike : to accumulate so much art as to be able to give the 
whole nation a supply of it, according to its need, and yet to regu- 
late its distribution so that there shall be no glut of it, nor contempt. 
A difficult balance, indeed, for us to hold, if it were left merely 
to our skill to poise ; but the just point between poverty and pro- 
fusion has been fixed for us accurately by the wise laws of Provi 
dence. If you carefully watch for all the genius you can detect, 
apply it to good service, and then reverently preserve what it pro 



54 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. IL 

duces, you will never have too little art ; and if, on the other 
hand, you never force an artist to work hurriedly, for ddly bread, 
nor imperfectly, because you would rather have showy works than 
complete ones, you will never have too much. Do not force the 
multiplication of art, and you will not have it too cheap ; do not 
wantonly destroy it, and you will not have it too dear. 

" But who wantonly destroys it ?" you will ask. Why, we all 
do. Perhaps you thought, when I came to this part of our sub- 
ject, corresponding to that set forth in our housewife's economy 
by the " keeping her embroidery from the moth," that I was going 
to tell you only how to take better care of pictures, how to clean 
them, and varnish them, and where to put them away safely when 
you went out of town. Ah, not at all. The utmost I have to ask 
of you is, that you will not pull them to pieces, and trample them 
under your feet. " What," you will say, " when do we do such 
things ? Haven't we built a perfectly beautiful gallery for all the 
pictures we have to take care of?" Yes, you have, for the pic- 
tures which are definitely sent to Manchester to be taken care of. 
But there are quantities of pictures out of Manchester which it is 
your business, and mine too, to take care of no less than of these, 
and which we are at this moment employing ourselves in pulling 
to pieces by deputy. I will tell you what they are, and where 
they are, in a minute ; only first let me state one more of those 
main principles of political economy on which the matter hinges. 

I must begin a little apparently wide of the mark, and ask you 
to reflect if there is any way in which we waste money more in 
England, than in building fine tombs ? Our respect for the dead, 
when they are just dead, is something wonderful, and the way we 
show it more wonderful still. We show it with black feathers and 
black horses ; we show it with black dresses and bright heraldries ; 
we show it with costly obelisks and sculptures of sorrow, which 
spoil half of our most beautiful cathedrals. We show it with fright- 
ful gratings and vaults, and lids of dismal stone, in the midst of the 



1.ECT. II.] III. ACCUMULATION. 55 

quiet grass ; and last, not least, we show it by permitting ourselves 
to tell any number of lies we think amiable or credible, in the epi- 
taph. This feeling is common to the poor as well as the rich ; 
and we all know how many a poor family will nearly ruin them- 
selves, to testify their respect for some member of it in his coffin, 
whom they never much cared for when he was out of it; and how 
often it happens that a poor old woman will starve herself to death, 
in order that she may be respectably buried. 

Now, this being one of the most complete and special ways of 
wasting money ; — no money being less productive of good, or of 
any percentage whatever, than that which we shake away from the 
ends of undertakers' plumes — it is of course the duty of all good 
economists, and kind persons, to prove and proclaim continually, 
to the poor as well as the rich, that respect for the dead is not 
really shown by laying great stones on them to tell us where they 
are laid ; but by remembering where they are laid without a stone 
to help us ; trusting them to the sacred grass and saddened flowers ; 
and still more, that respect and love are shown to them, not by 
great monuments to them which we build with our hands, but by 
letting the monuments stand, which they built with their own. 
And this is the point now in question. 

Observe, there are two great reciprocal duties concerning indus- 
try, constantly to be exchanged between the living and the dead. 
"We, as we live and work, are to be always thinking of those 
who are to come after us ; that what we do may be serviceable, as 
far as we can make it so, to them, as well as to us. Then, when 
we die, it is the duty of those who come after us to accept this 
work of ours with thanks and remembrance, not thrusting it aside 
or tearing it down the moment they think they have no use for it, 
And each generation will only be happy or powerful to the pitch 
that it ought to be, in fulfilling these two duties to the Past and 
the Future. Its own work will never be rightly done, even for 
itself — never good, or noble, or pleasurable to its own eyes — if it 



56 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. II, 

does not prepare it also for the eyes of generations yet to come. 
And its own possessions will never be enough for it, and its own 
wisdom never enough for it, unless it avails itself gratefully and 
tenderly of the treasures and the wisdom bequeathed to it by its 
ancestors. 

For, be assured, that all the' best things and treasures of this 
world are not to be produced by each generation for itself; but we 
are all intended, not to carve our work in snow that will melt, but 
each and all of us to be continually rolling a great white gathering 
snowball, higher and higher — larger and larger — along the Alps of 
human power. Thus the science of nations is to be accumulative 
from father to son : each learning a little more and a little more ; 
each receiving all that was known, and adding its own gain : the 
history and poetry of nations are to be accumulative ; each genera- 
tion treasuring the history and the songs of its ancestors, adding 
its own history and its own songs; and the art of nations is to be 
accumulative, just as science and history are ; the work of living 
men not superseding, but building itself upon the Work of the past. 
Nearly every great and intellectual race of the world has pro- 
duced, at every period of its career, an art with some peculiar and 
precious character about it, wholly unattainable by any other race, 
and at any other time ; and the intention of Providence concern- 
ing that art, is evidently that it should all grow together into one 
mighty temple ; the rough stones and the smooth all finding theii 
place, and rising, day by day, in richer and higher pinnacles to 
heaven. 

Now, just fancy what a position the world, considered as one 
great workroom — one great factory in the form of a globe — would 
have been in by this time, if it had in the least understood this 
duty, or been capable of it. Fancy what we should have had 
around us now, if, instead of quarrelling and fighting over their 
work, the nations had aided each other in their work, or if even 
in their conquests, instead of effacing the memorials of those they 



LECT. II.J III. ACCUMULATION. 57 

succeeded and subdued, they had guarded the spoils of then vic- 
tories. Fancy what Europe would be now, if the delicate statues 
and temples of the Greeks, — if the broad roads and massy walls 
of the Romans, — if the noble and pathetic architecture of the 
middle ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. 
You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time : I tell 
you, Time is scytheless and toothless ; it is we who gnaw like the 
worm — we who smite like the scythe. It is ourselves who abolish 
— ourselves who consume : we are the mildew, and the flame, and 
the soul of man is to its own work as the moth, that frets when it 
cannot fly, and as the hidden flame that blasts where it cannot 
illumine. All these lost treasures of human intellect have been 
wholly destroyed by human industry of destruction ; the marble 
would have stood its two thousand years as well in the polished 
statue as in the Parian cliff; but we men have ground it to pow- 
der, and mixed it with our own ashes. The walls and the ways 
would have stood — it is we who have left not one stone upon an- 
other, and restored its pathlessness to the desert ; the great cathe- 
drals of old religion would have stood — it is we who have dashed 
down the carved work with axes and hammers, and bid the 
mountain-grass bloom upon the pavement, and the sea-winds 
chaunt in the galleries. 

You will perhaps think all this was somehow necessary for the 
development of the human race. I cannotv stay now to dispute 
that, though I would willingly ; but do you think it is still neces- 
sary for that development ? Do you think that in this nineteenth 
century it is still necessary for the European nations to turn all 
the places where their principal art-treasures are into battle- 
fields ? For that is what they are doing even while I speak ; the 
great firm of the world is managing its business at this moment, 
just as it has done in past times. Imagine what would be the 
thriving circumstances of a manufacturer of some delicate pro- 
duce — suppose glass, or china — in whose workshop an 1 exhibition 



58 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. II. 

rooms all the workmen and clerks began fighting at least once a 
day, first blowing off the steam, and breaking all the machinery 
they could reach ; and then making fortresses of all the cup- 
boards, and attacking and defending the show-tables, the victori- 
ous party finally throwing everything they could get hold of out 
of the window, by way of showing their triumph, and the poor 
manufacturer picking up and putting away at last a cup here and 
a handle there. A fine prosperous business that would be, would 
it not ? and yet that is precisely the way the great manufacturing 
firm of the world carries on its business. 

It has so arranged its political squabbles for the last six or seven 
hundred years, that no one of them could be fought out but in the 
midst of its most precious art ; and it so arranges them to this 
day. For example, if I were asked to lay my finger, in a map of 
the world, on the spot of the world's surface which contained at 
this moment the most singular concentration of art-teaching and 
art-treasure, I should lay it on the name of the town of Verona. 
Other cities, indeed, contain more works of carriageable art, but 
none contain so much of the glorious local art, and of the springs 
and sources of art, which can by no means be made subjects of 
package or porterage, nor, I grieve to say, of salvage. Verona 
possesses, in the first place, not the largest, but the most perfect 
and intelligible Roman amphitheatre that exists, still unbroken in 
circle of step, and strong in succession of vault and arch : it con- 
tains minor Roman monuments, gateways, theatres, baths, wreck? 
of temples, which give the streets of its suburbs a character of 
antiquity unexampled elsewhere, except in Rome itself. But it 
contains, in the next place, what Rome does not contain — perfect 
examples of the great twelfth-century Lombardic architecture, 
which was the root of all the mediaeval art of Italy, without which 
no Giottos, no Angelicos, no Raphaels would have been possible ; 
it contains that architecture, not in rude forms, but in the most 
perfect and loveliest types it ever attained — contains those, not ir 



LECT. II.] III. ACCUMULATION. 59 

ruins, nor ii. altered and hardly decipherable fragments, but iE 
churches perfect from porch to apse, with all their carving fresh, 
their pillars firm, their joints unloosened. Besides these, it 
includes examples of the great thirteenth and fourteenth-century 
Gothic of Italy, not merely perfect, but elsewhere unrivalled. At 
Rome, the Roman — at Pisa, the Lombard, architecture may be 
seen in greater or in equal nobleness ; but not at Rome, nor Pisa, 
nor Florence, nor in any city of the world, is there a great medi- 
aeval Gothic like the Gothic of Verona. Elsewhere, it is either 
less pure in type or less lovely in completion : only at Verona may 
you see it in the simplicity of its youthful power, and the tender- 
ness of its accomplished beauty. And Verona possesses, in the 
last place, the loveliest Renaissance architecture of Italy, not dis- 
turbed by pride, nor defiled by luxury, but rising in fair fulfilment 
of domestic service, serenity of effortless grace, and modesty of 
home seclusion ; its richest work given to the windows that open 
on the narrowest streets and most silent gardens. All this she 
possesses, in the midst of natural scenery such as assuredly exists 
nowhere else in the habitable globe — a wild Alpine river foaming 
at her feet, from whose shores the rocks rise in a great crescent, 
dark with cypress, and misty with olive: inimitably, from before 
her southern gates, the tufted plains of Italy sweep and fade in 
golden light ; around her, north and west, the Alps crowd in 
crested troops, and the winds of Benacus bear to her the coolness 
of their snows. 

And this is the city — such, and possessing such things as these 
— at whose gates the decisive battles of Italy are fought continu- 
ally : three days her towers trembled with the echo of the cannon 
of Areola ; heaped pebbles of the Mincio divide her fields to this 
hour with lines of broken rampart, whence the tide of war rolled 
back to No vara ; and now on that crescent of her eastern cliffs, 
whence the full moon used to rise through the bars of the 
cypresses in her burning summer twilights, touching with soft 



60 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. II. 

increase of silver light the rosy marbles of her balconies, along 
the riclge of that encompassing rock, other circles are increasing 
now, white and pale ; walled towers of cruel strength, sable- 
spotted with cannon-courses. I tell you, I have seen, when the 
thunderclouds came down on those Italian hills, and all their crags 
were dipped in the dark, terrible purple, as if the winepress of the 
wrath of God had stained their mountain-raiment — I have seen the 
hail fall in Italy till the forest branches stood stripped and bare as 
if blasted by the locust ; but the white hail never fell from those 
clouds of heaven as the black hail will fall from the clouds of hell, 
if ever one breath of Italian life stirs again in the streets of 
Verona. 

Sad as you will feel this to be, I do not say that you can directly 
prevent it ; you cannot drive the Austrians ont of Italy, nor pre- 
vent them from building forts where they choose, but I do say,* 

* The reader can hardly but remember Mrs. Browning's beautiful appeaJ 
for Italy, made on the occasion of the first great Exhibitiou of Art in 
England : — 

Magi of the east and of the west, 

5Tour incense, gold, and myrrh are excellent ! — 

"What gifts for Christ, then, bring ye with the rest? 

Your hands have worked well. Is your courage spent 

In handwork only ? Have you nothing best, 

Which generous souls may perfect and present, 

And He shall thank the givers for ? no light 

Of teaching, liberal nations, for the poor, 

"Who sit in darkness when it is not night ? 

No cure for wicked children ? Christ, — no cure, 

Xo help for women, sobbing out of sight 

Because men made the laws ? no brothel-lure 

Burnt out by popular lightnings ? Hast thou found 

Xo remedy, my England, for such woes? 

No outlet, Austria, for the scourged and bound, 

No call back for the exiled ? no repose, 

Russia, for knouted Poles worked under ground, 



LECT. II.] III. ACCUMULATION. 61 

that you, and I, and all of us, ought to be both acting and feeling 
with a full knowledge and understanding of these things, and that, 
without trying to excite revolutions or weaken governments, we 
may give our own thoughts and help, so as in a measure to prevent 
needless destruction. "We should do this, if we only realized the 
thing thoroughly. You drive out day by day through your own 
pretty suburbs, and you think only of making, wu'th what money 
you have to spare, your gateways handsomer, and your carriage- 
drives wider — and your drawing-rooms more splendid, having a 
vague notion that you are all the while patronizing and advancing 
art, and you make no effort to conceive the fact, that within a few 
hours' journey of you, there are gateways and drawing-rooms 
which might just as well be yours as these, all built already; gate- 
ways built by the greatest masters of sculpture that ever struck 
marble ; drawing-rooms painted by Titian and Veronese ; and you 
won't accept, nor save these as they are, but you will rather fetch 
the house-painter from over the way, and let Titian and Veronese 
house the rats. "Yes," of course, you answer; "we want nice 
houses here, not houses in Verona. What should we do with 
houses in Verona?" And I answer, do precisely what you do 
with the most expensive part of your possessions here : take pride 
in them — only a noble pride. You know well, when you examine 

And gentle ladies bleached among the snows ? 

No mercy for the slave, America ? 

No hope for Rome, free France, chivalric France ? 

A las, great nations have great shames, I say. 

No pity, world ! no tender utterance 

Of benediction, and prayers stretched this way 

For poor Italia^ baffled by'mischance? 

gracious nations, give some ear to me 1 

You all go to your Fair, and I am one 

Who at the roadside of humanity 

Beseech your alms, — God's justice to be done, 

So prosper ! 



62 , POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT II 

your own hearts, that the greater part of the sums you spend on 
possessions are spent for pride. Why are your carriages nicely 
painted and finished outside ? You don't see the outsides as you 
sit in them — the outsides are for other people to see. Why are 
your exteriors of houses so well finished, your furniture so polished 
and costly, but for other people to see ? You are just as comfort- 
able yourselves, writing on your old friend of a desk, with the 
white cloudings in his leather, and using the light of a window 
which is nothing but a hole in the brick wall. And all that is 
desirable to be done in this matter, is merely to take pride in pre- 
serving great art, instead of in producing mean art ; pride in the 
possession of precious and enduring things, a little way off, instead 
of slight and perishing things near at hand. You know, in old 
English times, our kings liked to have lordships and dukedoms 
abroad, and why should not you, merchant princes, like to have 
lordships and estates abroad? Believe me, rightly understood, 
it would be a prouder, and in the full sense of our English 
word, more "respectable" thing to be lord of a palace at Ve- 
rona, or of a cloister full of frescos at Florence, than to have a 
file of servants dressed in the finest liveries that ever tailor 
stitched, as long as w T ould reach from here to Bolton : — yes, and a 
prouder thing to send people to travel in Italy, who would have 
to say every now and then, of some fair piece of art, " Ah ! this 
was kept here for us by the good people of Manchester," than to 
bring them travelling all the way here, exclaiming of your various 
art treasures, " These were brought here fo»- us (not altogether 
without harm) by the good people of Manchester." "Ah!" but 
you say, " the Art Treasures Exhibition will pay ; but Veronese 
palaces won't." Pardon me. They would pay, less directly, but 
far more richly. Do you suppose it is in the long run good for 
Manchester, or good for England, that the Continent should be in 
the state it is ? Do you think the perpetual fear of revolution, or 
the perpetual repression of thought and energy that clouds and 



LECT. II. J III. ACCUMULATION. 63 

encumbers the nations of Europe, is eventually profitable for us ? 
Were we any the better of the course of affairs in '48 ; or has the 
stabling of the dragoon horses in the great houses of Italy, any 
distinct effect in the promotion of the cotton-trade ? Not so. But 
every stake that you could hold in the stability of the Continent, 
and every effort that you could make to give example of English 
habits and principles on the Continent, and every kind deed that 
you could do in relieving distress and preventing despair on the 
Continent, would have tenfold reaction on the prosperity of 
England, and open and urge, in a thousand unforeseen directions, 
the sluices of commerce and the springs of industry. 

I could press, if I chose, both these motives upon you, of pride 
and self-intere^, with more force, but these are not motives which 
ought to be urged upon you at all. The only motive that I ought 
to put before you is simply that it would be right to do this ; that 
the holding of property abroad, and the personal efforts of English- 
men to redeem the condition of foreign nations, are among the 
most direct pieces of duty which our wealth renders incumbent 
upon us. I do not — and in all truth and deliberateness I say this 
— I do not know anything more ludicrous among the self-decep- 
tions of 'well-meaning people than their notion of patriotism, as 
requiring them to limit their efforts to the good of their own 
country; — the notion that charity is a geographical virtue, and 
that what it is holy and righteous to do for people on one bank 
of a river, it is quite improper and unnatural to do for people on 
the other. It will be a wonderful thing, some day or other, for 
the Christian world to remember, that it went on thinking for twc 
thousand years that neighbours were neighbours at Jerusalem, but 
not at Jericho; a wonderful thing for us English to reflect, in 
after-years, how long it was before we could shake hands with 
anybody across that shallow salt wash, which the very chalk-dust 
of its two shores whitens from Folkstone to Ambleteuse. 

Nor ought the motive of gratitude, as well as that of Mercy, t<7 



64 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. II, 

be without its influence on you, who have been the first to ask to 
see, and the first to show to us, the treasures which this poor lost 
Italy has given to England. Remember all these things that 
delight you here were hers — hers either in fact or in teaching ; 
hers, in fact, are all the most powerful and most touching paintings 
of old time that now glow upon your walls ; hers m teaching are 
all the best and greatest of descendant souls — your Reynolds and 
your Gainsborough never could have painted but for Venice ; and 
the energies which have given the only true life to your existing 
art were first stirred by voices of the dead, that haunted the 
Sacred Field of Pisa. 

Well, all these motives for some definite course of action on 
our part towards foreign countries rest upon very serious facts; 
too serious, perhaps you will think, to be interfered with ; for we 
are all of us in the habit of leaving great things alone, as if Pro- 
vidence would mind them, and attending ourselves only to little 
things which we know, practically, Providence doesn't mind unless 
we do. We are ready enough to give care to the growing of 
pines and lettuces, knowing that they don't grow Providentially 
sweet or large unless we look after them ; but we don't give 
any care to the good of Italy or Germany, because we think that 
they will grow Providentially happy without any of our med- 
dling. 

Let us leave the great things, then, and think of little things; 
not of the destruction of whole provinces in war, which it may 
not be any business of ours to prevent ; but of the destruction of 
poor little pictures in peace, from which it surely would not be 
much out of our way to save them. You know I said, just now, 
we were all of us engaged in pulling pictures to pieces by deputy, 
and you did not believe me. Consider, then, this similitude of 
ourselves. Suppose you saw (as I doubt not you often do see) a 
prudent and kind young lady sitting at work, in the corner of a 
quiet room, knitting comforters for her cousins, and that just out 



LECT. II.] III. ACCUMULATION. 65 

side, in the hall, you saw a cat and her kittens at play among the 
family pictures ; amusing themselves especially with the best 
Vandykes, by getting on the tops of the frames, and then scram- 
bling down the canvasses by their claws ; and on some one' 
informing the young lady of these proceedings of the cat and 
kittens, suppose she answered that it wasn't her cat, but her 
sister's, and the pictures weren't hers, but her uncle's, and she 
couldn't leave her work, for she had to make so many pairs of 
comforters before dinner. Would you not say that the prudent 
and kind young lady was, on the whole, answerable for the addi- 
tional touches of claw on the Vandykes? Now, that is precisely 
what we prudent and kind English are doing, only on a larger 
scale. Here we sit in Manchester, hard at work, very properly, 
making comforters for our cousins all over the world. Just out- 
side there in the hall — that beautiful marble hall of Italy — the 
cats and kittens and monkeys are at play among the pictures : I 
assure you, in the course of the fifteen years in which I have 
been working in those places in which the most precious remnants 
of European art exist, a sensation, whether I would or no, was 
gradually made distinct and deep in my mind, that I was living 
and working in the midst of a den of monkeys ; — sometimes ami- 
able and affectionate monkeys, with all manner of winning- wavs 
and kind intentions ; — more frequently selfish and malicious mon- 
keys, but, whatever their disposition, squabbling continually about 
nuts, and the best places on the barren sticks of trees; and 
that all this monkeys' den was filled, by mischance, with precious 
pictures, and the witty and wilful beasts were always wrapping 
themselves up and going to sleep in pictures, or tearing holes in 
them to grin through; or tasting them and spitting them out 
again, or twisting them up into ropes and making swings of them ; 
and that sometimes only, by watching one's opportunity, and bear- 
ing a scratch or a bite, one could rescue the corner of a Tin- 
toret, or Paul Veronese, and push it through the bars into a 



66 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. Il» 

place of safety. Literally, I assure you, this was, and this is, the 
fixed impression on my mind of the state of matters in Italy. 
And see how. The professors of art in Italy, having long fol- 
lowed a method of study peculiar to themselves, have at last 
arrived at a form of art peculiar to themselves; very different 
from that which was arrived at by Correggio and Titian. Natu- 
rally, the professors like their own form the best; and, as the 
old pictures are generally not so startling to the eye as the 
modern ones, the dukes and counts who possess them, and who 
like to see their galleries look new and fine (and are persuaded 
also that a celebrated chef-d'oeuvre ought always to catch the eye 
at a quarter of a mile off), believe the professors who tell them 
their sober pictures are quite faded, and good for nothing, and 
should all be brought bright again; and accordingly, give the 
sober pictures to the professors, to be put right by rules of art. 
Then, the professors repaint the old pictures in all the princi- 
pal places, leaving perhaps only a bit of background to set off 
their own work. And thus the professors come to be generally 
figured in my mind, as the monkeys who tear holes in the 
pictures, to grin through. Then the picture-dealers, who live by 
the pictures, cannot sell them to the English in their old and pure 
state ; all the good work must be covered with new paint, and var- 
nished so as to look like one of the professorial pictures in the 
great gallery, before it is saleable. And thus the dealers come to 
be imaged, in my mind, as the monkeys who make ropes of 
the pictures, to swing by. Then, every now and then, in some old 
stable, or wine-cellar, or timber-shed, behind some forgotten vats 
or faggots, somebody finds a fresco of Perugino's or Giotto's, 
but doesn't think much of it, and has no idea of having people 
coming into his cellar, or being obliged to move his faggots ; and 
so he whitewashes the fresco, and puts the faggots back again ; 
and these kind of persons, therefore, come generally to be imaged 
in m}' mind, as the monkeys who taste the pictures, and spit 



LECT. II.] in. ACCUMULATION. Gl 

them out, not finding them nice. "While, finally, the squabbling 
for nuts and apples (called in Italy " bella liberta ") goes on all 
day long. 

Now, all this might soon be put an end to, if we English, who 
are so fond of travelling in the body, would also travel a little in 
soul : We think it a great triumph to get our packages and our 
persons carried at a fast pace, but we never take the slightest 
trouble to put any pace into our perceptions ; we stay usually at 
home in thought, or if we ever mentally see the world, it is at the 
old stage-coach or waggon rate. Do but consider what an odd 
sight it would be, if it were only quite clear to you how things are 
really going on — how, here in England, we are making enormous 
and expensive efforts to produce new art of all kinds, knowing and 
confessing all the while that the greater part of it is bad, but 
struggling still to produce new patterns of wall-papers, and new 
shapes of tea-pots, and new pictures, and statues, and architecture ; 
and pluming and cackling if ever a tea-pot or a picture has the 
least good in it ; — all the while taking no thought whatever of the 
best possible pictures, and statues, and wall-patterns already in 
existence, which require nothing but to be taken common care ofj 
and kept from damp and dust : but we let the walls fall that 
Giotto patterned, and the canvasses rot that Tintoret painted, and 
the architecture be dashed to pieces that St. Louis built, while we 
are furnishing our drawing-rooms with prize upholstery, and 
writing accounts of our handsome warehouses to the country 
papers. Don't think I use my words vaguely or generally : I 
speak of literal facts. Giotto's frescos at Assisi are perishing at 
this moment for want of decent care ; Tintoret's pictures in San 
Sebastian at Venice, are at this instant rotting piecemeal into grey 
rags ; St. Louis's chapel, at Carcassonne, is at this moment lying 
in shattered fragments in the market-place. And here we are all 
cawing and crowing, poor little half-fledged daws as we are, about 
the pretty sticks and wool in our own nests. There's hardlv 



68 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. II 

a day passes, when I am at home, but I get a letter from some 
well-meaning country clergyman, deeply anxious about the state 
of his parish church, and breaking his heart to get money together 
that he may hold up some wretched remnant of Tudor tracery, 
with one niche in the corner and no §tatue — when all the while 
the mightiest piles of religious architecture and sculpture that ever 
the world saw are being blasted and withered away, without one 
glance of pity or regret. The country clergyman does not care 
for them — he has a sea-sick imagination that cannot cross channel. 
What is it to him, if the angels of Assisi fade from its vaults, or 
the queens and kings of Chartres fall from their pedestals ? They 
are not in his parish. 

" What !" you will say, " are we not to produce any new art, 
uor take care of our parish churches ?" " No, certainly not, until 
you have taken proper care of the art you have got already, and 
of the best churches out of the parish. Your first and proper 
standing is not as churchwardens and parish overseers, in an Eng- 
lish county, but as members of the great Christian community of 
Europe. And as members of that community (in which alone, 
observe, pure and precious ancient art exists, for there is none in 
America, none in Asia, none in Africa), you conduct yourselves 
precisely as a manufacturer would, who attended to his looms, but 
left his warehouse without a roof. The rain floods your ware- 
house, the rats frolic in it, the spiders spin in it, the choughs build 
in it, the wall-plague frets and festers in it, and still you keep 
weave, weave, weaving at your wretched webs, and thinking you 
ate growing rich, while more is gnawed out of your warehouse in 
an hour than you can weave in a twelvemonth. 

Even this similitude is not absurd enough to set us rightly forth. 
The weaver would, or might, at least, hope that his new woof was 
as stout as the old ones, and that, therefore, in spite of rain and 
ravage, he would have something to wrap himself in when he 
needed it. But our webs rot as we spin. The very fact that we 



LECT. II.] III. ACCUMULATION. 69 

■ despise the great art of the past shows that we cannot produce 
great art now. If we could do it, we should love it when we saw 
it done — if we really cared for it, we should recognise it and keep 
it ; but we don't care for it. It is not art that we want ; it is 
amusement, gratification of pride, present gain — anything in the 
world but art : let it rot, we shall always have enough to talk 
about and hang over our sideboards. 

You will (I hope) finally ask me what is the outcome of all this, 
practicable to-morrow morning by us who are sitting here ? These 
are the main practical outcomes of it : In the first place, don't 
grumble when you hear of a new picture being bought by Govern- 
ment at a large price. There are many pictures in Europe now 
in danger of destruction which are, in the true sense of the word, 
priceless ; the proper price is simply that which it is necessary to 
give to get and to save them. If you can get them for fifty 
pounds, do ; if not for less than a hundred, do ; if not for less than 
five thousand, do ; if not for less than twenty thousand, do ; never 
mind being imposed upon : there is nothing disgraceful in being 
imposed upon ; the only disgrace is in imposing ; and you can't 
in general get anything much worth having, in the way of Conti- 
nental art, but it must be with the help or connivance of numbers 
of people, who, indeed, ought to have nothing to do with the 
matter, but who practically have, and always will have, everything 
to do with it ; and if you don't choose to submit to be cheated by 
them out of a ducat here and a zecchin there, you will be cheated 
by them out of your picture ; and whether you are most imposed 
upon in losing that, or the zecchins, I think I may leave you to 
judge ; though I know there are many political economists, who 
would rather leave a bag of gold on a garret-table, than give a 
porter sixpence extra to carry it downstairs. 

• That, then, is the first practical outcome of the matter. Nevei 
grumble, but be glad when you hear of a new picture being bought 
at a large price. In the long run, the dearest pictures are always 



'70 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. II 

the best bargains ; and, I repeat (for else you might think I said 
it in mere hurry of talk, and not deliberately), there, are some 
pictures which are without price. You should stand, nationally, 
at the edge of Dover cliffs — Shakespeare's — and wave blank 
cheques in the eyes of the nations on the other side of the sea, 
freely offered, for such and such canvasses of theirs. 

Then the next practical outcome of it is — Never buy a copy of 
a picture, under any circumstances whatever. All copies are bad ; 
because no painter who is worth a straw ever will copy. He will 
make a study of a picture he likes, for his own use, in his own 
way ; but he won't and can't copy ; whenever you buy a copy, 
you buy so much misunderstanding of the original, and encourage 
a dull person in following a business he is not fit for, besides 
increasing ultimately chances of mistake and imposture, and far- 
thering, as directly as money can farther, the cause of ignorance 
in all directions. You may, in fact, consider yourself as having 
purchased a certain quantity of mistakes ; and, according to your 
power, being engaged in disseminating them. 

I do not mean, however, that copies should never be made 
A certain number of dull persons should always be employed by 
a Government in making the most accurate copies possible of all 
good pictures ; these copies, though artistically valueless, would be 
hictorically and documentarily valuable, in the event of the destruc- 
tion of the original picture. The studies also made by great artists 
for their own use, should be sought after with the greatest eager- 
ness ; they are often to be bought cheap ; and in connection with 
mechanical copies, would become very precious; tracings from 
frescos and other large works are all of great value ; for though a 
tracing is liable to just as many mistakes as a copy, the mistakes 
in a tracing are of one kind only, which may be allowed for, but 
the mistakes of a common copyist are of all conceivable kinds: 
finally, engravings, in so far as they convey certain facts about the 
pictures, are often serviceable and valuable. I can't, of course, 



LECT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION. 1\ 

enter into details in these matters just now ; only this main piece 
of advice I can safely give you — never to buy copies of pictures 
(for your private possession) which pretend to give a facsimile that 
shall be in any wise representative of, or equal to, the original. 
Whenever you do so, you are only lowering your taste, and wast- 
ing your money. And if you are generous and wise, you will be 
ready rather to subscribe as much as you would have given for a 
copy of a great picture, towards its purchase, or the purchase of 
some other like it, by the nation. There ought to be a great 
National Society instituted for the purchase of pictures ; presenting 
them to the various galleries in our great cities, and watching 
there over their safety : but in the meantime, you can always act 
safely and beneficially by merely allowing your artist friends to 
buy pictures for you, when they see good ones. Never buy for 
yourselves, nor go to the foreign dealers ; but let any painter whom 
you know be entrusted, when he finds a neglected old picture in 
an old house, to try if he cannot get it for you; then, if you like 
it, keep it ; if not, send it to the hammer, and you will find that 
you do not lose money on pictures so purchased. 

And the third and chief practical outcome of the matter is this 
general one : Wherever you go, whatever you do, act more for 
'preservation and less for production. I assure you, the world is, 
generally speaking, in calamitous disorder, and just because you 
have managed to thrust some of the lumber aside, and get an 
available corner for yourselves, you think you should do nothing 
but sit spinning in it all day long — while, as householders and 
economists, your first thought and effort should be, to set things 
more square all about you. Try to set the ground floors in order, 
and get the rottenness out of your granaries. Then sit and spin, 
but not till then. 

IY. Distribution. — And no^r, lastly, we come to the fourth 
great head of our inquiry, the question of the wise distribution of 



72 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. 11 

the art we have gathered and preserved. It must be evident to us, 
at a moment's thought, that the way in which works of art are 
on the whole most useful to the nation to which they belong, 
must be by their collection in public galleries, supposing those 
galleries properly managed. But there is one disadvantage 
attached necessarily to gallery exhibition, namely, the extent of 
mischief which may be done by one foolish curator. As long as 
the pictures which form the national wealth are disposed in private 
collections, the chance is always that the people who buy them will 
be just the people who are fond of them ; and that the sense of 
exchangeable value in the commodity they possess, will induce 
them, even if they do not esteem it themselves, to take such care 
of it as will preserve its value undiminished. At all events, so 
long as works of art are scattered throughout the nation, no uni- 
versal destruction of them is possible ; a certain average only are 
lost by accidents from time to time. But when they are once 
collected in a large public gallery, if the appointment of curator 
becomes in any way a matter of formality, or the post is so lucra- 
tive as to be disputed by place-hunters, let but one foolish or care- 
less person get possession of it, and perhaps you may have all your 
fine pictures repainted, and the national property destroyed, in a 
month. That is actually the case at this moment in several great 
foreign galleries. They are the places of execution of pictures : 
over their doors you only want the Dantesque inscription, " Las- 
ciate ogni speranza, voi che entrate.'' 

Supposing, however, this danger properly guarded against, as it 
would be always by a nation which either knew the value, 01 
understood the meaning, of painting,* arrangement in a publn 
gallery is the safest, as well as the most serviceable, method of 



* It would be a great point gained towards the preservation of pictures il 
it were made a rule that at every operation they underwent, the exact spots 
in which they have been re-painted should be recorded in writing. 



LECT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION. 73 

exhibiting pictures ; and it is the only mode in which their histori 
cal value can be brought out, and their historical meaning made 
clear. But great good is also to be done by encouraging the pri- 
vate possession of pictures; partly as a means of study, (much 
more being always discovered in any work of art by a person who 
has it perpetually near him than by one who only sees it from 
time to time,) and also as a means of refining the habits and 
touching the hearts of the masses of the nation in their domestic 
life. 

For these last purposes the most serviceable art is the living art 
of the time ; the particular tastes of the people will be best met, 
and their particular ignorances best corrected, by painters labour- 
ing in the midst of them, more or less guided to the knowledge of 
what is wanted by the degree of sympathy with which their work 
is received. So then, generally, it should be the object of go- 
vernment, and of all patrons of art, to collect, as far as may be r 
the works of dead masters in public galleries, arranging them so 
as to illustrate the history of nations, and the progress and influ- 
ence of their arts ; and to encourage the private possession of the 
works of living masters. And the first and best way in which to 
encourage such private possession is, of course, to keep down the 
price of them as far as you can. 

I hope there are not a great many painters . in the room; if 
there are, I entreat their patience for the next quarter of an hour : 
if they will bear with me for so long, I hope they will not, finally, 
be offended by what I am going to say. 

I repeat, trusting to their indulgence in the interim, that the 
first object of our national economy, as respects the distribution 
of modern art, should be steadily and rationally to limit its prices, 
since by doing so, you will produce two effects; you will make 
the painters produce more pictures, two or three instead of one, 
if they wish to make money ; and you will, by bringing good 
pictures within the reach of people of moderate income, excite the 



74 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. ['.EOT IL 

general interest of the nation in them, increase a thousandfold the 
demand for the commodity, and therefore its wholesome and 
natural production. 

I know how many objections must arise in your minds at this 
moment to what I say ; but you must be aware that it is not 
possible for me in an hour to explain all the moral and commercial 
bearings of such a principle as this. Only, believe me, I do not 
speak lightly ; I think I have considered all the objections which 
could be rationally brought forward, though I have time at present 
only to glance at the main one, namely, the idea that the high 
prices paid for modern pictures are either honourable, or service- 
able, to the painter. So far from this being so, I believe one of 
the principal obstacles to the progress of modern art to be the 
high prices given for good modern pictures. For observe first the 
action of this high remuneration on the artist's mind. If he 
" gets on," as it is called, catches the eye of the public, and 
especially of the public of the upper classes, there is hardly any 
limit to the fortune he may acquire ; so that, in his early years, 
his mind is naturally led to dwell on this worldly and wealthy 
eminence as the main thing to be reached by his art ; if he finds 
that he is not gradually rising towards it, he thinks there is some- 
thing wrong in his work ; or, if he is too proud to think that, 
still the bribe of wealth and honour warps him from his honest 
labour into efforts to attract attention; and he gradually loses 
both his power of mind and his rectitude of purpose. This, 
according to the degree of avarice or ambition which exists in 
any painter's mind, is the necessary influence upon him of the 
hope of great wealth and reputation. But the harm is still 
greater, in so far as the possibility of attaining fortune of this kind 
tempts people continually to become painters who have no real 
gift for the work ; and on whom these motives of mere w T orldiy 
interest have exclusive influence ; — men who torment and abuse 
the patient workers, eclipse or thrust aside all delicate and good 



LECT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION 75 

pictures by their own gaudy and coarse ones, corrupt the taste of 
the public, and do the greatest amount of mischief to the schools 
of art in their day which it is possible for their capacities to effect; 
and it is quite wonderful how much mischief may be done even 
by small capacity. If you could by any means succeed in keep- 
ing the prices of pictures down, you would throw all these dis- 
turbers out ol the way at once. 

You may perhaps think that this severe treatment would do 
more harm than good, by withdrawing the wholesome element of 
emulation, and giving no stimulus to exertion ; but I am sorry to 
say that artists will always be sufficiently jealous of one another, 
whether you pay them large or low prices ; and as for stimulus to 
exertion, believe me, no good work in this world was ever done 
for money, nor while the slightest thought of money affected the 
painter's mind. Whatever idea of pecuniary value enters into his 
thoughts as he works, will, in proportion to the distinctness of its 
presence, shorten his power. A real painter will work for you 
exquisitely, if you give him, as I told you a little while ago, bread 
and water and salt ; and a bad painter will work badly and 
hastily, though you give him a palace to live in, and a princedom 
to live upon. Turner got, in his earlier years, half-a-crown a day 
and his supper (not bad pay, neither) ; and he learned to paint 
upon that. And I believe that there is no chance of art's truly 
nourishing in any country, until you make it a simple and plain 
business, providing its masters with an easy competence, but rarely 
with anything more. And I say this, not because I despise the 
great painter, but because I honour him ; and I should no more 
think of adding to his respectability or happiness by giving him 
riches, than, if Shakspeare or Milton were alive, I should think 
we added to their respectability, or were likely to get better work 
from them, by making them millionaires. 

But, observe, it is not only the painter himself whom you injure, 
by giving him too high prices; you injure all the inferior painters 



*I6 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. |~LECT. U 

of the day. If they are modest, they will be discouraged and 
depressed by the feeling that their doings are worth so little, com- 
paratively, in your eyes ; — if proud, all their worst passions will be 
aroused, and the insult or opprobrium which they will try to cast 
on their successful rival will not only afflict and wound him, but 
at last sour and harden him : he cannot pass through such a trial 
without grievous harm. 

That, then, is the effect you produce on the painter of mark, 
and on the inferior ones of his own standing. But you do worse 
than this; you deprive yourselves, by what you give for the 
fashionable picture, of the power of helping the younger men who 
are coming forward. Be it admitted, for argument's sake, if you 
are not convinced by what I have said, that you do no harm to 
the great man by paying him well ; yet certainly you do him no 
special good. His reputation is established, and his fortune made ; 
he does not care whether you buy or not : he thinks he is rather 
doing; you a favour than otherwise bv letting- you have one of his 
pictures at all. All the good you do him is to help him to buy a 
new pair of carriage horses ; whereas, with that same sum which 
thus you cast away, you might have relieved the hearts and pre- 
served the health of twenty young painters ; and if among those 
twenty, you but chanced on one in whom a true latent power had 
been hindered by his poverty, just consider what a far-branching, 
far-embracing good you have wrought with that lucky expenditure 
of yours. I say, " Consider it" in vain ; you cannot consider it, 
for you cannot conceive the sickness of the heart with which a 
young painter of deep feeling toils through his first obscurity ; — 
his sense of the strong voice within him, which you will not 
hear ; — his vain, fond, wondering witness to the things you will 
not see ; — his far away perception of things that he could accom 
plish if he had but peace and time, all unapproachable and vanish- 
ing from him, because no one will leave him peace or grant him 
time : all his friends falling back from him ; those whom he would 



LECT. n.J IV. DISTRIBUTION. 77 

most reverently obey rebuking and paralysing him ; and last and 
•worst of all, those who believe in him the most faithfully suffering 
by him the most bitterly ; — the wife's eyes, in their sweet ambition, 
shining brighter as the cheek wastes away ; and the little lips at 
his side parched and pale which one day, he knows, though he 
may never ?ee it, will quiver so proudly when they name his name, 
calling him " our father." You deprive yourselves, by your large 
expenditure for pictures of mark, of the power of relieving and 
redeeming this distress ; you injure the painter whom you pay so 
largely ; — and what, after all, have you done for yourselves, or 
got for yourselves ? It does not in the least follow that the hur- 
ried work of a fashionable painter will contain more for your 
money than the quiet work of some unknown man. In all pro- 
bability, you will find, if you rashly purchase what is popular at a 
high price, that you have got one picture you don't care for, for 
a sum which would have bought twenty you would have delighted 
in. For remember always that the price of a picture by a living 
artist, never represents, never can represent, the quantity of labour 
or value in it. Its price represents, for the most part, the degree 
of desire which the rich people of the country have to possess it. 
Once get the wealthy classes to imagine that the possession of 
pictures by a given artist adds to their " gentility," and there is 
no price which his work may not immediately reach, and for years 
maintain ; and in buying at that price, you are not getting value 
for your money, but merely disputing for victory in a contest of 
ostentation. And it is hardly possible to spend your money in a 
worse or more wasteful way ; for though you may not be doing it 
for ostentation yourself, you are, by your pertinacity, nourishing 
the ostentation of others ; you meet them in their game of wealth, 
and continue it for them; if they had not found an opposite 
player, the game would have been done; for a proud man can 
find no enjoyment in possessing himself of what nobody disputes 
with him. So that by every farthing you give for a picture beyond 



78 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT Ii 

its fair price — that is to say, the price which will pay the painter foi 
his time — you are not only cheating yourself and buying vanity, but 
you are stimulating the vanity of others ; paying, literally, for the 
sultivation of pride. You may consider every pound that you 
spend above the just price of a work of art, as an investment in a 
cargo of mental quick-lime or guano, which, being laid on the 
fields of human nature, is to grow a harvest of pride. You are in 
fact ploughing and harrowing, in a most valuable part of your 
land, in order to reap the whirlwind ; you are setting your hand 
stoutly to Job's agriculture, " Let thistles grow instead of wheat, 
and cockle instead of barley.'' 

Well, but you will say, there is one advantage in high prices, 
which more than counterbalances all this mischief, namely, that 
by great reward we both urge and enable a painter to produce 
rather one perfect picture than many inferior ones : and one per- 
fect picture (so you tell us, and we believe it) is worth a great 
number of inferior ones. 

It is so ; but you cannot get it by paying for it. A great work 
is only done when the painter gets into the humour for it, likes his 
subject, and determines to paint it as well as he can, whether he 
is paid for it or not ; but bad work, and generally the worst sort 
of bad work, is done when he is trying to produce a showy pic- 
ture, or one that shall appear to have as much labour in it as shall 
bo worth a high price.* 

* "When this lecture was delivered, I gave here some data for approximate 
estimates of the average value of good modern pictures of different classes ; 
but the subject is too complicated to be adequately treated in writing, with- 
out introducing more detail than the reader will have patience for. But I 
may state roughly, that prices above a hundred guineas are in general extra- 
vagant for water-colours, and above five hundred for oils. An artist 
almost always does wrong who puts more work than these prices will remu- 
nerate him for into any single canvass — his talent would be better employed 
in painting two pictures than one so elaborate. The water-colour paintera 



LEUT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION. 79 

There is, however, another point, and a still more important 
one, bearing on this matter of purchase, than the keeping down 
of prices to a rational standard. And that is, that you pay your 
prices into the hands of living men, and do not pour them into 
coffins. 

For observe that, as we arrange our payment of pictures at 
present, no artist's work is worth half its proper value while he is 
alive. The moment he dies, his pictures, if they are good, reach 
double their former value ; but that rise of price represents simply 
a profit made by the intelligent dealer or purchaser on his past 
purchases. So that the real facts of the matter are, that the Bri- 
tish public, spending a certain sum annually in art, determines 
that, of every thousand it pays, only five hundred shall go to the 
painter, or shall be at all concerned in the production of art ; and 
that the other five hundred shall be paid merely as a testimonial 
to the intelligent dealer, who knew what to buy. Now, testimo- 
nials are very pretty and proper things, within due limits ; but 
testimonial to the amount of a hundred per cent, on the total 
expenditure is not good political economy. Do not, therefore, in 
general, unless you see it to be necessary for its preservation, buy 
the picture of a dead artist. If you fear that it may be exposed to 
contempt or neglect, buy it ; its price will then, probably, not be 
high : if you want to put it into a public gallery, buy it ; you are 
sure, then, that you do not spend your money selfishly : or, if you 
loved the man's work while he was alive, and bought it then, buy 
it also now, if you can see no living work equal to it. But if you 
did not buy it while the man was living, never buy it after he is 

also are getting into the habit of making their drawings too large, and in a 
measure attaching their price rather to breadth and extent of touch than to 
thoughtful labour. Of course marked exceptions occur here and there, as 
in the case of John Lewis, whose drawings are wrought with unfailing pre- 
cision throughout, whatever their scale. Hardly any price can be remune- 
rative for such work. 



80 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. II 

dead : you are then doing no good to him, and you are .loing some 
shame to yourself. Look around you for pictures that you really 
like, and by buying which you can help some genius yet unpe- 
rished — that is the best atonement you can make to the one you 
have neglected — and give to the living and struggling painter at 
once wages, and testimonial. 

So far then of the motives which should induce us to keep 
down the prices of modern art, and thus render it, as a private 
possession, attainable by greater numbers of people than at present. 
But we should strive to render it accessible to them in other ways 
also — chiefly by the permanent decoration of public buildings; 
and it is in this field that I think we may look for the profitable 
means of providing that constant employment for young painters 
of which we were speaking last evening. 

The first and most important kind of public buildings which we 
are always sure to want, are schools : and I would ask you to con- 
sider very carefully, whether we may not wisely introduce some 
great changes in the way of school decoration. Hitherto, as far as 
I know, it has either been so difficult to give all the education we 
wanted to our lads, that we have been obliged to do it, if at all, 
with cheap furuiture in bare walls ; or else we have considered 
that cheap furniture and bare walls are a proper part of the means 
of education ; and supposed that boys learned best when they sat 
on hard forms, and had nothing but blank plaster about and above 
them whereupon to employ their spare attention ; also, that it was 
as well they should be accustomed to rough and. ugly conditions 
of things, partly by way of preparing them for the hardships of 
life, and partly that there might be the least possible damage done 
to floors and forms, in the event of their becoming, during the 
master's absence, the fields or instruments of battle. All this is 
so far well and necessary, as it relates to the training of country 
lads, and the first training of boys in general. But there certainly 
comes a period in the life of a well educated youth, in which one 



LECT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION. 81 

of the principal elements of his education is, or ought to be, to gi\ e 
him refinement of habits ; and not only to teach him the strong 
exercises of which his frame is capable, but also to increase his 
bodily sensibility and refinement, and show him such small mat- 
ters as the way of handling things properly, and treating them 
considerately. Not only so, but I believe the notion of fixing the 
attention by keeping the room empty, is a wholly mistaken one : 
I think it is just in the emptiest room that the mind wanders most; 
for it gets restless, like a bird, for want of a perch, and casts about 
for any possible means of getting out and away. And even if it 
be fixed, by an effort, on the business in hand, that business 
becomes itself repulsive, more than it need be, by the vileness of 
its associations ; and many a study appears dull or painful to a 
boy, when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk, under a wall with 
nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which would have been pur- 
sued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father's library, 
or at the lattice window of his cottage. Nay, my own belief is, 
that the best study of all is the most beautiful ; and that a quiet 
glade of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the 
schoolrooms in Christendom, when once you are past the multipli- 
cation table ; but be that as it may, there is no question at all but 
that a time ought to come in the life of a well trained youth, 
when he can sit at a writing table without wanting to throw the 
inkstand at his neighbour ; and when also he will feel more capa- 
ble of certain efforts of mind with beautiful and refined forms 
about him than with ugly ones. When that time comes he 
ought to be advanced into the decorated schools; and this advance 
ought to be one of the important and honourable epochs of his 
life. 

I have not time, however, to insist on the mere serviceableness 
to our youth of refined architectural decoration, as such ; for I 
want you to consider the probable influence of the particular kind 
of decoration which I wish you to get for them, namely, historical 

4* 



82 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. II 

painting. You know we have hitherto been in the habit of con- 
veying all our historical knowledge, such as it is, by the ear only, 
never by the eye ; all our notions of things being ostensibly 
derived from verbal description, not from sight. Now, I have no 
doubt that, as we grow gradually wiser — and we are doing so 
every day — we shall discover at last that the eye is a nobler organ 
than the ear ; and that through the eye we must, in reality, 
obtain, or put into form, nearly all the useful information we are 
to have about this world. Even as the matter stands, you will 
find that the knowledge which a boy is supposed to receive from 
verbal description is only available to him so far as in any under- 
hand way he gets a sight of the thing you are talking about. I 
remember well that, for many years of my life, the only notion I 
had of the look of a Greek knight was complicated between recol- 
lection of a small engraving in my pocket Pope's Homer, and 
reverent study of the Horse-Guards. And though I believe that 
most boys collect their ideas from more varied sources, and 
arrange them more carefully than I did ; still, whatever sources 
they seek must always be ocular : if they are clever boys, they 
will go and look at the Greek vases and sculptures in the British 
Museum, and at the weapons in our armouries — they will see 
what real armour is like in lustre, and what Greek armour was 
like in form, and so put a fairly true image together, but still not, 
in ordinary cases, a very living or interesting one. Now, the use 
of your decorative painting would be, in myriads of ways, to 
animate their history for them, and to put the living aspect of 
past things before their eyes as faithfully as intelligent invention 
can; so that the master shall have nothing to do but once to 
point to the schoolroom walls, and for ever afterwards the meaning 
of any word would be fixed in a boy's mind in the best possible 
way. Is it a question of classical dress — what a tunic was like, 
or a chlamys, or a peplus ? At this day, yon have to point to 
'Oine vile woodcut, in the middle of a dictionary page, iepresent- 



LECT. II.J IV. DISTRIBUTION. 83 

ing the thing hung upon a stick ; but then, you would point to a 
hundred figures, wearing the actual dress, in its fiery colours, in 
all the actions of various stateliness or strength ; you would under- 
stand at once how it fell round the people's limbs as they stood, 
how it drifted from their shoulders as they went, how it veiled 
their faces as they wept, how it covered their heads in the day oi 
battle. Now, if you want to see what a weapon is like, you refer, 
in like manner, to a numbered page, in which there are spear- 
heads in rows, and sword-hilts in symmetrical groups; and 
gradually the boy gets a dim mathematical notion how one 
scymitar is hooked to the right and another to the left, and one 
javelin has a knob to it and another none : while one glance at 
your good picture would show him, — and the first rainy afternoon 
in the schoolroom would for ever fix in his mind, — the look of the 
sword and spear as they fell or flew ; and how they pierced, or 
bent, or shattered — how men wielded them, and how men died 
by them. But far more than all this, is it a question not of 
clothes or weapons, but of men ? how can we sufficiently estimate 
the effect on Ihe mind of a noble youth, at the time when the 
world opens to him, of having faithful and touching representa- 
tions put before him of the acts and presences of great men — 
how many a resolution, which would alter and exalt the whole 
course of his after-life, might be formed, w 7 hen in some dreamy 
twilight he met, through his own tears, the fixed eyes of those 
shadows of the great dead, unescapable and calm, piercing to his 
soul ; or fancied that their lips moved in dread reproof or sound- 
less exhortation. And if but for one out of many this w r ere true — 
if yet, in a few, you could be sure that such influence had indeed 
changed their thoughts and destinies, and turned the eager and 
reckless youth, who would have cast away his energies on the 
race-horse or the gambling-table, to that noble life-race, that holy 
life-hazard, which should win all glory to himself and all good to 



84 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [LECT. II 

his country — would not that, to some purpose, be ''political 
economy of art?" 

And observe, there could be no monotony, no exhaustibleness, 
in the scenes required to be thus portrayed. Even if there were, 
and you wanted for every school in the kingdom, one death of 
Leonidas; one battle of Marathon; one death of Cleobis and 
Bito ; there need not therefore be more monotony in your art 
than there was in the repetition of a given cycle of subjects by 
the religious painters of Italy. But we ought not to admit a cycle 
at all. For though we had as many great schools as we have 
great cities (one day I hope we shall have), centuries of painting 
would not exhaust, in all the number of them, the noble and 
pathetic subjects which might be chosen from the history of even 
one noble nation. But, beside this, you will not, in a little while, 
limit your youths' studies to so narrow fields as you do now. 
There will come a time — I am sure of it — when it will be found 
that the same practical results, both in mental discipline, and in 
political philosophy, are to be attained by the accurate study of 
mediaeval and modern as of ancient history ; and that the facts 
of mediaeval and modern history are, on the whole, the most im- 
portant to us. And among these noble groups of constellated 
schools which I foresee arising in our England, I foresee also that 
there will be divided fields of thought ; and that while each will 
give its scholars a great general idea of the world's history, such 
as all men should possess — each will also take upon itself, as its 
own special duty, the closer study of the course of events in some 
given place or time. It will review the rest of history, but it will 
exhaust its own special field of it; and found its moral and 
political teaching on the most perfect possible analysis of the 
results of human conduct in one place, and at one epoch. And 
then, the galleries of that school will be painted with the historical 
scenes belonging to the age which it has chosen for its specia 
study. 



LECT. II.J IV. DISTRIBUTION. 85 

So far, then, of art as you may apply it to that great senes of 
public buildings which you devote to the education of youth. The 
next large class of public buildings in which we should introduce 
it, is one which I think a few years more of national progress will 
render more serviceable to us than they have been lately. I 
mean, buildings for the meetings of guilds of trades. 

And here, for the last time, I must again interrupt the course 
of our chief inquiry, in order to state one other principle of 
political economy, which is perfectly simple and indisputable ; but 
which, nevertheless, we continually get into commercial embarrass- 
ments for want of understanding ; and not only so, but suffer 
much hindrance in our commercial discoveries, because many of 
our business men do not practically admit it. 

Supposing half a dozen or a dozen men were cast ashore from 
a wreck on an uninhabited island, and left to their own resources, 
one of course, according to his capacity, would be set to one 
business and one to another ; the strongest to dig and to cut wood, 
and to build huts for the rest : the most dexterous to make shoes 
out of bark and coats out of skins; the best educated to look foi 
iron or lead in the rocks, and to plan the channels for the irriga 
tion of the fields. But though their labours were thus naturall} 
severed, that small group of shipwrecked men would understand 
well enough that the speediest progress was to be made by help- 
ing each other, — not by opposing each other : and they would 
know that this help could only be properly given so long as they 
were frank and open in their relations, and the difficulties which 
each lay under properly explained to the rest. So that any 
appearance of secresy or separateness in the actions of any of 
them would instantly, and justly, be looked upon with suspicion 
by the rest, as the sign of some selfish or foolish proceeding on the 
part of the individual. If, for instance, the scientific man were 
found to have gone out at night, unknown to the rest, to alter the 
sluices, the others would think, and in all probability rightly think, 



86 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. IL 

that he wantecLto get the best supply of water to his own field; 
and if the shoemaker refused to show them where the bark grew 
which he made the sandals of, they would naturally think, and in 
all probability rightly think, that he didn't want them to see how 
much there was of it, and that he meant to ask from them more 
corn and potatoes in exchange for his sandals than the trouble of 
making them deserved. And thus, although each man would 
have a portion of time to himself in which he was allowed to do 
what he chose without let or inquiry, — so long as he was working 
in that particular business which he had undertaken for the com- 
mon benefit, any secresy on his part would be immediately sup- 
posed to mean mischief; and would require to be accounted for, 
or put an end to : and this all the more because, whatever the 
work might be, certainly there would be difficulties about it which, 
when once they were well explained, might be more or less done 
away with by the help of the rest ; so that assuredly every one of 
them would advance with his labour not only more happily, but 
more profitably and quickly, by having no secrets, and by frankly 
bestowing, and frankly receiving, such help as lay in his way to 
get or to give. 

And, just as the best and richest result of wealth and happiness 
to the whole of them, w r ould follow on their perseverance in such 
a system of frank communication and of helpful labour ; — so pre- 
cisely the worst and poorest result would be obtained by a system 
of secresy and of enmity ; and each man's happiness and wealth 
would assuredly be diminished in proportion to the degree in 
which jealousy and concealment became their social and economi- 
cal principles. It would not, in the long run, bring good, but only 
evil, to the man of science, if, instead of telling openly where he 
had found good iron, he carefully concealed every new bed of it, 
that he might ask, in exchange for the rare ploughshare, more 
corn from the farmer, or in exchange for the rude needle, more 
labour from the sempstress : and it would not ultimately bring 



LECT. II.J IV. DISTRIBUTION. 87 

good, but only evil, to the farmers, if they sought to burn each 
other's cornstacks, that they might raise the value of their grain, 
or if the sempstresses tried to break each other's needles, that each 
might get all the stitching to herself. 

Now, these laws of human action are precisely as authoritative 
in their application to the conduct of a million of men, as to that 
of six or twelve. All enmity, jealousy, opposition, and secresy are 
wholly, and in all circumstances, destructive in their nature — not 
productive; and all kindness, fellowship, and communicativeness 
are invariably productive in their operation, — not destructive ; and 
the evil principles of opposition and exclusiveness are not ren- 
dered less fata], but more fatal, by their acceptance among large 
masses of men ; more fatal, I say, exactly in proportion as their 
influence is more secret. For though the opposition does always 
its own simple, necessary, direct quantity of harm, and withdraws 
always its own simple, necessary, measurable quantity of wealth 
from the sum possessed by the community, yet, in proportion to 
the size of the community, it does another and more refined mis- 
chief than this, by concealing its own fatality under aspects of mer- 
cantile complication and expediency, and giving rise to multitudes 
of false theories based or a mean belief in narrow and immediate 
appearances of good done here and there by things which have 
the universal and everlasting nature of evil. So that the time and 
powers of the nation are wasted, not only in wretched struggling 
against each other, but in vain complaints, and groundless discou- 
ragements, and empty investigations, and useless experiments in 
laws, and elections, and inventions ; with hope always to pull wis- 
dom through some new-shaped slit in a ballot-box, and to drag 
prosperity down out of the clouds along some new knot of electric 
wire ; while all the while Wisdom stands calling at the corners of 
the streets, and the blessing of heaven waits ready to rain down 
upon us, deeper than the rivers and broader than the dew, if only 
we will obey the first plain principles of humanity, and the first 



88 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lEC'T. IL 

plain precepts of the skies; "Execute true judgment, and sho\? 
mercy and compassion, every man to his brother •; and let none of 
you imagine evil against his brother in your heart."* 

Therefore, I believe most firmly, that as the laws of national 
prosperity get familiar to us, we shall more and more cast our toil 
into social and communicative systems ; and that one of the first 
means of our doing so, will be the re-establishing guilds of every 
important trade in a vital, not formal, condition ; — that there will 
be a great council or government house for the members of every 
trade, built in whatever town of the kingdom occupies itself prin- 
cipally in such trade, with minor council halls in other cities ; and 
to each council-hall, officers attached, whose flrst business may be 

* It would be well if] instead of preaching continually about the doctrine 
of faith and good works, our clergymen would simply explain to their people 
a little what good works mean. There is not a chapter in all the book we 
profess to believe, more specially, and directly written for England, than the 
second of Habakkuk, and I never in all my life heard one of its practical texts 
preached from. I suppose the clergymen are all afraid, and know that their 
flocks, while they will sit quite politely to hear syllogisms out of the epistle 
to the Romans, would get restive directly if they ever pressed a practical 
text home to them. But we should have no mercantile catastrophes, and no 
distressful pauperism, if we only read often, and took to heart, those plain 
words: "Yea, also, because he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, 
who enlargeth his desire as hell, and cannot be satisfied, — Shall not all these 
take up a parable against him, and a taunting proverb against him, and say, 
1 Woe to him tbat increaseth that which is not his : and to him that ladeth 
himself with thick clay. 1 " (What a glorious history, in one metaphor, of the 
life of a man greedy of fortune.) " Woe to him that coveteth an evil cove- 
tousness that he may set his nest on high. Woe to- him that buildeth a 
town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity. Behold, is it not of the 
Lord of Hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people 
shall weary themselves for very vanity." 

The Americans, who have been sending out ships with sham bolt-heads or. 
their timbers, and only half their bolts, may meditate on that " buildeth a 
town with blood." 



LECT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION. 89 

to examine into the circumstances of every operative, in that trade, 
who chooses to report himself to them when out of work, and to 
set him to work, if he is indeed able and willing, at a fixed rate ot 
wages, determined at regular periods in the council-meetings; 
and whose next duty may be to bring reports before the council 
of all improvements made in the business, and means of its exten- 
sion : not allowing private patents of any kind, but making all 
improvements available to every member of the guild, only allot- 
ting, after successful trial of them, a certain reward to the inven- 
tors. 

For these, and many other such purposes, such halls will be 
again, I trust, fully established, and then, in the paintings and 
decorations of them, especial effort ought to be made to express the 
worthiness and honourableness of the trade for whose members 
they are founded. For I believe one of the worst symptoms of 
modern society to be, its notion of great inferiority, and ungentle- 
manliness, as necessarily belonging to the character of a tradesman. 
I believe tradesmen may be, ought to be — often are, more gentle- 
men than idle and useless people : and I believe that art may do 
noble work by recording in the hall of each trade, the services 
which men belonging to that trade have done for their country, 
both preserving the portraits, and recording the important incidents 
in the lives, of those who have made great advances in commerce 
and civilization. I cannot follow out this subject, it branches too 
far, and in too many directions ; besides, I have no doubt you will 
at once see and accept the truth of the main principle, and be able 
to think it out for yourselves. I would fain also have said some- 
thing of what might be done, in the same manner, for almshouses 
and hospitals, and for what, as I shall try to explain in notes to 
this lecture, we may hope to see, some day, established with a 
different meaning in their name than that they now bear — work- 
houses; but I have detained you too long already, and cannot 
permit myself to trespass further on your patience except only to 



90 POLITICAL ECONOMY 01 ART. [lECT. I] 

recapitulate, in closing, the simple principles respecting wealth, 
which we have gathered during the course of our inquiry ; prin 
ciples which are nothing more than the literal and practical accep- 
tance of the saying, which is in all good men's mouths ; namely, 
that they are stewards or ministers of whatever talents are 
entrusted to them. Only, is it not a strange thing, that while we 
more or less accept the meaning of that saying, so long as it is 
considered metaphorical, we never accept its meaning in its 
own terms ? You know the lesson is given us under the form of a 
story about money. Money was given to the servants to make use 
of: the unprofitable servant dug in the earth, and hid his Lord's 
money. Well, we, in our poetical and spiritual application of this, 
say, that of course money doesn't mean money, it means wit, it 
means intellect, it means influence in high quarters, it means every- 
thing in the world except itself. And do not you see what a 
pretty and pleasant come-off there is for most of us, in this spiritual 
application ? Of course, if we had wit, we would use it for the 
good of our fellow-creatures. But we haven't wit. Of course, if 
we had influence with the bishops, we would use it for the good of 
the Church ; but we haven't any influence with the bishops. Of 
course, if we had political power, we would use it for the good of 
the nation ; but we have no political power ; we have no talents 
entrusted to us of any sort or kind. It is true we have a little 
money, but the parable can't possibly mean anything so vulgar 
as money ; our money's our own. 

I believe, if you think seriously of this matter, you will feel that 
the first and most literal application is just as necessary a one as 
any other — that the story does very specially mean what it says — 
plain money ; and that the reason we don't at once believe it does 
so, is a sort of tacit idea that while thought, wit, and intellect, 
and all power of birth and position, are indeed given to us, and, 
therefore, to be laid out for .the Giver, — our wealth has not been 
given to us ; but we have worked for it, and have a right to spend 



LECT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION. 



91 



it as we choose. 1 think you will find that is the real substance 
of our understanding in this matter. Beauty, we say, is given by 
God — it is a talent ; strength is given by God — it is a talent ; po^ 
sition is given by God — it is a talent ; but money is proper wages 
for our day's work — it is not a talent, it is a due. We may justly 
spend it on ourselves, if w T e have worked for it. 

And there would be some shadow of excuse for this, were it not 
that the very power of making the money is itself only one of the 
applications of that intellect or strength which we confess to be 
talents. Why is one man richer than another ? Because he is 
more industrious, more persevering, and more sagacious. Well, 
who made him more persevering and more sagacious than others ? 
That power of endurance, that quickness of apprehension, that calm- 
ness of judgment, which enable him to seize the opportunities that 
others lose, and persist in the lines of conduct in which others 
fail — are these not talents ? — are they not in the present state 
of the world, among the most distinguished and influential of men- 
tal gifts ? And is it not wonderful, that while we should be utter- 
ly ashamed to use a superiority of body, in order to thrust our 
weaker companions aside from some place of advantage, we 
unhesitatingly use our superiorities of mind to thrust them back 
from whatever good that strength of mind can attain. You would 
be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or a 
lecture-room, and, calmly choosing the best place, take his feeble 
neighbour by the shoulder, and turn him out of it into the back 
seats, or the street. You would be equally indignant if you saw a 
stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry chil- 
dren were being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take 
their bread from them. But you are not the least indignant if 
when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, 
instead of being long-armed only, has the much greater gift of 
being long-headed — you think it perfectly just that he should use 
his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other 



02 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT, IV 

men in the town who are of the same trade with him ; or use hia 
breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the com- 
merce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is him- 
self to be the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the 
points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of 
his eyes. You see no injustice in this. 

But there is injustice ; and, let us trust, one of which honour- 
able men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty. In 
some degree, however, it is indeed not unjust ; in some degree it is 
necessary and intended. It is assuredly just that idleness should be 
surpassed by energy ; that the widest influence should be possessed 
by those who are best able to wield it ; and that a wise man, at 
the end of his career, should be better off than a fool. But for 
that reason, is the fool to be wretched, utterly crushed down, and 
left in all the suffering which his conduct and capacity naturally 
inflict? — Not so. What do you suppose fools were made for? 
That you might tread upon them, and starve them, and get 
the better of them in every possible way ? By no means. They 
were made that wise people might take care of them. That is 
the true and plain fact concerning the relations of every strong and 
wise man to the world about him. He has his strength given him, 
not that he may crush the weak, but that he may support and 
guide them. In his own household he is to be the guide and the 
support of his children ; out of his household he is still to be the 
father, that is, the guide and support of the weak and the poor ; 
not merely of the meritoriously weak and the innocently poor, but 
of the guiltily and punishably poor ; of the men who ought to have 
known better — of the poor who ought to be ashamed of themselves. 
It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has 
lost her son ; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the work- 
man who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in 
sickness. But it is something to use your time and strength to war 
with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind ; to keep 



LECT. II.] IV. DISTRIBUTION. 93 

the erring workman in your service till you have made him an 
unerring one ; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the opportunity 
which his dulness would have lost. This is much ; but it is yet 
more, when you have fully achieved the superiority which is due to 
you, and acquired the wealth which is the fitting reward of your 
sagacity, if you solemnly accept the responsibility of it, as it is the 
helm and guide of labour far and near. For you who have it in 
your hands, are in reality the pilots of the power and effort of the 
State. It is entrusted to you as an authority to be used for good 
or evil, just as completely as kingly authority was ever given to a 
prince, or military command to a captain. And, according to the 
quantity of it that you have in your hands, you are the arbiters of 
the will and work of England ; and the whole issue, whether the 
work of the State shall suffice for the State or not, depends upon 
you. You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads of the 
English labourers, and say to them, as they stoop to its waving, 
" Subdue this obstacle that has baffled our fathers, put away this 
plague that consumes our children ; water these dry places, plough 
these desert ones, carry this food to those who are in hunger ; 
carry this light to those who are in darkness ; carry this life to 
those who are in death ;" or on the other side you may say to her 
labourers : " Here am I ; this power is in my hand ; come, build a 
mound here for me to be throned upon, high and wide ; come, make 
c v owns for my head, that men may see them shine from far away ; 
come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the 
silk and purple ; come, dance before me, that I may be gay ; and 
sing sweetly to me, that I may slumber ; so shall I live in joy, and 
die in honour." And better than such an honourable death, it 
were that the day had perished wherein we were born, and the 
night in which it was said there is a child conceived. 

I trust that in a little while, there will be few of our rich men 
who, through carelessness or covetousness, thus forfeit the glorious 
office which is intended for their hands. I said, just now, that 



94 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. [lECT. II. 

wealth ill-used was as the net of . the spider, entangling and 
destroying : but wealth well used, is as the net of the sacred 
fisher who gathers souls of men out of the deep. A time will 
come — I do not think even now it is far from us— -when this 
golden net of the world's wealth will be spread abroad as the 
flaming meshes of morning cloud are over the sky; bearing with 
them the joy of light and the dew of the morning, as well as the 
summons to honourable and peaceful toil. What less can we hope 
from your wealth than this, rich men of England, when once you 
feel fully how, by the strength of your possessions — not, observe, by 
the exhaustion, but by the administration of them and the power 
— you can direct the acts, — command the energies- -inform the 
ignorance, — prolong the existence, of the whole hum ,n race ; and 
how, even of worldly wisdom, which man employs faithfully, it is 
true, not only that her ways are pleasantness, but that her paths are 
peace ; and that, for all the children of men, as well as for those 
to whom she is given, Length of days are in her right hand, \« in 
her left hand Riches and Honour ? 



ADDENDA. 9ft 



ADDENDA. 



Note, p. 20. — " Fatherly authority, ." 

This statement could not, of course, be heard without displeasure 
by a certain class of politicians ; and in one of the notices of these 
lectures given in the Manchester journals at the time, endeavour 
was made to get quit of it by referring to the Divine authority, as 
the only Paternal power with respect to which men were truly 
styled "brethren." Of course it is so, and, equally of course, all 
human government is nothing else than the executive expression 
of this Divine authority. The moment government ceases to be 
the practical enforcement of Divine law, it is tyranny ; and the 
meaning which I attach to the words, " paternal government," is 
in more extended terms, simply this — " The executive fulfilment, 
by formal human methods, of the will of the Father of mankind 
respecting His children." I could not give such a definition of 
Government as this in a popular lecture; and even in written 
form, it will necessarily suggest many objections, of which I must 
notice and answer the most probable. 

Only, in order to avoid the recurrence of such tiresome phrases 
as " it may be answered in the second place," and " it will be 
objected in the third place," &c, I will ask the reader's leave to 
arrange the discussion in the form of simple dialogue, letting O. 
stand for objector, and i?. for response. 

0. — You define your paternal government to be the executive 
fulfilment, by formal human methods, of the Divine will. But, 
assuredly, that will cannot stand in need of aid or expression from 
human laws. It cannot fail of its fulfilment. 

R. — In the final sense it cannot ; and in that sense, men who 



96 POLITICAL RflONOlO OF ART. 

are committing murder and stealing are fulfilling the will of God 
as mucli as the best and kindest people in the world. But in the 
limited and present sense, the only sense with, which we have any- 
thing to do, God's will concerning man is fulfilled by some men, 
and thwarted by others. And those men who either persuade or 
enforce the doing of it, stand towards those who are rebellious 
against it exactly in the position of faithful children in a family, 
w T ho, when the father is out of sight, either compel or persuade 
the rest to do as their father would have them, were he present ; 
and in so far as they are expressing and maintaining, for the time, 
the paternal authority, they exercise, in the exact sense in which I 
mean the phrase to be understood, paternal government over the rest. 

0. — But, if Providence has left a liberty to man in many things 
in order to prove him, why should human law abridge that liberty, 
and take upon itself to compel what the great Lawgiver does not 
compel ? 

R. — It is confessed, in the enactment of any law whatsoever, 
that human lawgivers have a right to do this. For, if you have 
no right to abridge any of the liberty which Providence has left 
to man, you have no right to punish any one for committing mur- 
der or robbery. You ought to leave them to the punishment of 
God and Nature. But if you think yourself under obligation to 
punish, as far as human laws can, the violation of the will of God 
by these great sins, you are certainly under the same obligation to 
punish, with proportionately less punishment, the violation of His 
will in less sins. 

0. — No; you must not attempt to punish less sins by law, 
because you cannot properly define nor ascertain them. Every- 
body can determine whether murder has been committed or not, 
but you cannot determine how far people have been unjust or 
cruel in minor matters, and therefore cannot make or execute laws 
concerning minor matters. 

R. — If I propose to you to punish faults which cannot be defined, 
or to execute laws which cannot be made equitable, reject the 
laws I propose. But do not generally object to the principle of law. 

0. — Yes; I generally object to the principle of law as applied 
to minor things ; because, if you could succeed (which you can- 



ADDENDA. 



97 



not) in regulating the entire conduct of men by law in little things 
as well as great, you would take away from human life all its pro- 
bationary character, and render many virtues and pleasures impos- 
sible. You would reduce virtue to the movement of a machine, 
instead of the act of a spirit. 

R. — You have just said, parenthetically, and I fully and will- 
ingly admit it, that it is impossible to regulate all minor matters 
by law. Is it not probable, therefore, that the degree in which it 
is possible to regulate them by it, is also the degree in which it is 
right to regulate them by it? Or what other means of judgment 
will you employ, to separate the things which ought to be for- 
mally regulated from the things which ought not? You admit 
that great sins should be legally repressed; but you say that small 
sins should not be legally repressed. How do you distinguish 
between great and small sins ; and how do you intend to deter- 
mine, or do you in practice of daily life determine, on what occa- 
sion you should compel people to do right, and on what occasion 
you should leave them the option of doing wrong ? 

0. — I think you cannot make any accurate or logical distinc- 
tion in such matters; but that common sense and instinct have, in 
all civilized nations, indicated certain crimes of great social harm- 
fulness, such as murder, theft, adultery, slander, and such like, 
which it is proper to repress legally; and that common sense and 
instinct indicate also the kind of crimes which it is proper foi 
laws to let alone, such as miserliness, ill-natured speaking, and 
many of those commercial dishonesties which I have a notion you 
want your paternal government to interfere with. 

R. — Pray do not alarm yourself about what my paternal go- 
vernment is likely to interfere with, but keep to the matter in 
hand. You say that " common sense and instinct" have, in all 
civilized nations, distinguished between the sins that ought to be 
legally dealt with and that ought not. Do you mean that the 
laws of all civilized nations are perfect? 

0. — No ; certainly not. 

R. — Or that they are perfect at least in their discrimination of 
what crimes they should deal with, and what crimes they should 
let alone ? 

5 



98 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

0. — No; not exactly. 

R. — What do you mean then ? 

0. — I mean that the general tendency is right in the laws of 
civilized nations ; and that, in due course of time, natural sense 
and instinct point out the matters they should be brought to bear 
upon. And each question of legislation must be made a separate 
subject of inquiry as it presents itself: you cannot fix any general 
principles about what should be dealt with legally, and what 
should not. 

R, — Supposing it to be so, do you think there are any points 
in which our English legislation is capable of amendment, as it 
bears on commercial and economical matters, in this present time \ 

0. — Of course I do. 

R. — Well, then, let us discuss these together quietly; and if the 
points that I want amended seem to you incapable of amendment, 
or not in need of amendment, say so : but don't object, at starting, 
to the mere proposition of applying law to things which have not 
had law applied to them before. You have admitted the fitness 
of my expression, " paternal government :" it only has been, 
and remains a question between us, how far such government 
should extend. Perhaps you would like it only to regulate, among 
the children, the length of their lessons ; and perhaps I should like 
it also to regulate the hardness of their cricket-balls : but cannot 
you wait quietly till you know what I want it to do, before quar- 
relling with the thing itself? 

0. — No ; I cannot wait quietly : in fact I don't see any use in 
beginning such a discussion at all, because I am quite sure from 
the first, that you want to meddle with things that you have no 
business with, and to interfere with healthy liberty of action in all 
sorts of ways ; and I know that you can't propose any laws that 
would be of real use.* 

* If the reader is displeased with me for putting this foolish speech into 
his mouth, I entreat his pardon ; but he may be assured that it is a speech 
which would be made by many people, and the substance of which would be 
tacitly felt by many more, at this point of the discussion. I have really 
tried, up to this point, to make the objector as intelligent a person as it is 
possible for an author to imagine anybody to be, vrho differs with him 



ADDENDA. T*S 

R. — If you indeed know that, you would be wrong to hear me 
any farther. But if you are only in painful doubt about me, which 
makes you unwilling to run the risk of wasting your time, I will 
tell you beforehand what I really do think about this same liberty 
of action, namely, that whenever we can make -a perfectly equita- 
ble law about any matter, or even a law securing, on the whole, 
more just conduct than unjust, we ought to make that law; and 
that there will yet, on these conditions, always remain a number 
of matters respecting which legalism and formalism are impossible ; 
enough, and more than enough, to exercise all human powers of 
iudividual judgment, and afford all kinds of scope to individual 
character. I think this ; but of course it can only be proved by 
separate examination of the possibilities of formal restraint in each 
given field of action ; and these two lectures are nothing more 
than a sketch of such a detailed examination in one field, namely, 
that of art. You will find, however, one or two other remarks on 
such possibilities in the next note. 



Note 2nd, p. 22. — " Eight to public support" 

It did not appear to me desirable, in the course of the spoken 
lecture, to enter into details or offer suggestions on the questions 
of the regulation of labour and distribution of relief, as it would 
have been impossible to do so without touching on many disputed 
or disputable points, not easily handled before a general audience. 
But I must now supply what is wanting to make my general 
statement clear. 

I believe, in the first place, that no Christian nation has any 
business to see one of its members in distress without helping him, 
though, perhaps, at the same time punishing him : help, of course 
— in nine cases out of ten — meaning guidance, much more than 
gift, and, therefore, interference with liberty. When a peasant 
mother sees one of her careless children fall into a ditch, her first 
proceeding is to pull him out; her second, to box his ears; her 
third, ordinarily, to lead him carefully a little way by the handj 



100 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

or send him home for the rest of the day. The child usual!} 
cries, and very often would clearly prefer remaining in the ditch 
and if he understood any of the terms of politics, would certainh 
express resentment at the interference with his individual liberty : 
but the mother has doue her duty. Whereas the usual call of the 
mother nation to any of her children, under such circumstances, 
has lately been nothing more than the foxhunter's, — " Stay still 
there ; I shall clear you." And if we always could clear them, 
their requests to be left in muddy independence might be some- 
times allowed by hind people, or their cries for help disdained by 
unkind ones. But we can't clear them. The whole nation is, in 
fact, bound together, as men are by ropes on a glacier — if one 
falls, the rest must either lift him or drag him along with them* 
as dead weight, not without much increase of danger to themselves. 
And the law of right being manifestly in this, as, whether mani- 
festly or not, it is always, the law of prudence, the only question 
is, how this wholesome help and interference are to be adminis- 
tered. 

The first interference should be in education. In order that 
men may be able to support themselves when they are grown, 
their strength must be properly developed while they are young ; 
and the state should always see to this — not allowing their health 
to be broken by too early labour, nor their powers to be wasted 
for want of knowledge. Some questions connected with this 
matter are noticed farther on under the head "trial schools:" one 
point I must notice here, that I believe all youths of whatever 
rank, ought to learn some manual trade thoroughly ; for it is quite 
wonderful how much a man's views of life are cleared bv the 
attainment of the capacity of doing any one thing well with his 
hands and arms. For a long time, what right life there was in the 
upper classes of Europe depended in no small degree on the 

* It is very curious to watch the efforts of two shopkeepers to ruin each 
other, neither having the least idea that his ruined neighbour must eventually 
be supported at his own expense, with an increase of poor rates ; and that 
the contest between them is not in reality which shall get everything for 
himself, but which shall first take upon himself and his customers the gratui- 
tous maintenance of the other's family. 



ADDENDA. 101 

necessity which each man was under of being able to fence ; at 
this day, the most useful things which boys learn at public schools 
are, I believe, riding, rowing, and cricketing. But it would be fa* 
better that members of Parliament should be able to plough 
straight, and make a horseshoe, than only to feather oars neatly 
or point t,heir toes prettily in stirrups. Then, in literary and 
scientific teaching, the great point of economy is to give the dis- 
cipline of it through knowledge which will immediately bear on 
practical life. Our literary work has long been economically 
useless to us because too much concerned with dead languages ; 
and our scientific work will yet, for some time, be a good deal lost, 
because scientific men are too fond or too vain of their systems, 
and waste the student's time in endeavouring to give him large 
views, and make him perceive interesting connections of facts; 
when there is not one student, no, nor one man, in a thousand, 
who can feel the beauty of a system, or even take it clearly into 
his head ; but nearly all men can understand, and most will be 
interested in, the facts which bear on daily life. Botanists have 
discovered some wonderful connection between nettles and figs, 
which a cowboy who will. never see a ripe fig in his life need not 
be at all troubled about; but it will be interesting to him to know 
what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to 
porridge ; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got 
but once, in a spring-time, to look well at the beautiful circlet of 
the white nettle blossom, and work out with his schoolmaster the 
curves of its petals, and the way it is set on its central mast. So, 
the principle of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far 
less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their 
knowing how to find whether the water is wholesome in the back- 
kitchen cistern, or whether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk. 
Having, then, directed the studies of our youth so as to make 
them practically serviceable men at the time of their entrance into 
life, that entrance should always be ready for them in cases where 
Iheir private circumstances present no opening. There ought to 
be government establishments for every trade, in which all youths 
who desired it should be received as apprentices on their leaving 
school ; and men thrown out of work received at all times. At 



102 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

these government manufactories the discipline should be strict, 
and the wages steady, not varying at all in proportion to the 
demand for the article, but only in proportion to the price of food ; 
the commodities produced being laid up in store to meet sudden 
demands, and sudden fluctuations in prices prevented : — that gra- 
dual and necessary fluctuation only being allowed which is pro- 
perly consequent on larger or more limited supply of raw material 
and other natural causes. When there was a visible tendency to 
produce a glut of any commodity, that tendency should be checked 
by directing the youth at the government schools into other 
trades; and the yearly surplus of commodities should be the prin- 
cipal means of government provision for the poor. That provision 
should be large, and not disgraceful to them. At present there 
are very strange notions in the public mind respecting the receiv- 
ing of alms : most people are willing to take them in the form of 
a pension from government, but unwilling to take them in the form 
of a pension from their parishes. There may be some reason for this 
singular prejudice, in the fact of the government pension being 
usually given as a definite acknowledgment of some service done 
to the country ; — but the parish pension is, or ought to be, given 
precisely on the same terms. A labourer serves his country with 
his spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with 
his sword, pen, or lancet ; if the service is less, and therefore the 
wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, 
may be less, but not, therefore, less honourable ; and it ought to 
be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a labourer to 
take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of 
his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from 
his country, because he has deserved well of his country. If there 
be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may imply 
improvidence in early life, much more is there disgrace in coming 
to the government ; since improvidence is far less justifiable in a 
highly educated than in an imperfectly educated man ; and far 
less justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been 
luxury, than in a low rank, where it may only have been comfort. 
So that the real fact of the matter is, that people will take alms 
delightedly, consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those 



ADDENDA. 103 

do not look like alms to the people in the street ; bivt they will 
not take alms consisting only of bread and water and coals, 
because everybody would understand what those meant. Mind, 
I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who ought to have 
it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. I should 
indeed be sorry if any change in our views on these subjects 
involved the least lessening of self-dependence in the English 
mind ; but the common shrinking of men from the acceptance of 
public charity is not self-dependence, but mere base and selfish 
pride. It is not that they are unwilling to live at their neighbours' 
expense, but that they are unwilling to confess they do ; it is not 
dependence they wish to avoid, but gratitude. They will take 
places in which they know there is nothing to be done — they will 
borrow money they know they cannot repay — they will carry on 
a losing business with other people's capital — they will cheat the 
public in their shops, or sponge on their friends at their houses ; 
but to say plainly they are poor men, who need the nation's help, 
and go into an almshouse — this they loftily repudiate, and virtu- 
ously prefer being thieves to being paupers. 

I trust that these deceptive efforts of dishonest men to appear 
independent, and the agonizing efforts of unfortunate men to 
remain independent, may both be in some degree checked by a 
better administration and understanding of laws respecting the 
poor. But the ordinances for relief and the ordinances for labour 
must go together ; otherwise distress caused by misfortune will 
always be confounded, as it is now, with distress caused by idleness, 
unthrift, and fraud. It is only when the state watches and guides 
the middle life of men, that it can, without disgrace to them, pro- 
tect their old age, acknowledging in that protection that thev 
have done their duty, or at least some portion of their duty, in 
better days. 

I know well how strange, fanciful, or impracticable these sug- 
gestions will appear to most of the business men of this day ; men 
who conceive the proper state of the Avorld to be simply that of a 
vast and disorganized mob, scrambling each for what he can get, 
trampling down its children and old men in the mire, and doing 
what work it finds must be done with any irregular squad of labour- 



104 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

ers it can bribe or inveigle together, and afterwards scatter to star- 
vation. A great deal may, indeed, be done in this way by a nation 
strong-elbowed and strong-hearted as we are — not easilv frightened 
by pushing, nor discouraged by falls. But it is still not the right 
way of doing things, for people who call themselves Christians. 
Every so named soul of man claims from every other such soul, 
protection and education in childhood — help or punishment in 
middle life — reward or relief, if needed, in old age ; all of these 
should be completely and unstinting! y given, and they can only be 
given by the organization of such a system as I have described. 



tfote 3rd, p. 25.— " Trial Schools." 

It may be seriously questioned by the reader how much of paint- 
ing talent we really lose on our present system,* and how much 

* It will be observed that, in the lecture, it is assumed that works of art are 
national treasures ; and that it is desirable to withdraw all the hands capable 
of painting or carving from other employments, in order that they may pro- 
duce this kind of wealth. I do not, in assuming this, mean that works of art 
add to the monetary resources of a nation, or form part of its wealth, in the 
vulgar sense. The result of the sale of a picture in the country itself is 
merely that a certain sum of money is transferred from the hands of B. the 
purchaser, to those of A. the producer; the sum ultimately to be distributed 
remaining the same, only A. ultimately spending it instead of B., while the 
labour of A. has been in the meantime withdrawn from productive channels ; 
he has painted a picture which nobody can live upon, or live in, when he 
might have grown corn or built houses : when the sale therefore is effected 
in the country itself, it does not add to, but diminishes, the monetary resources 
of the country, except only so far as it may appear probable, on other grounds, 
that A. is likely to spend the sum he receives for his picture more rationally 
and usefully than B. would have spent it If, indeed, the picture, or other 
work of art, be sold in foreign countries, either the money or the useful pro- 
ducts of the foreign country being imported in exchange for it, such sale adds 
to the monetary resources of the selling, and diminishes those of the purchas- 
ing nation. But sound political economy, strange as it may at first appear to 
say so, has nothing whatever to do with separations between national inter- 
ests. Political economy means the management of the affairs of citizens; and 
it either regards exclusively the administration of the affairs of one nation, or 
the administration of the affairs of the world considered as one nation. Sfl 



ADDENDA. 105 

we should gain by the proposed trial schools. For it rnigl t be 
thought, that as matters stand at present, we have more painters 
than we ought to have, having so many bad ones, and that all youths 
who had true painters' genius forced their way out of obscurity. 

when a transaction between individuals which enriches A., impoverishes B. 
in precisely the same degree, the sound economist considers it an unproduc- 
tive transaction between the individuals ; and if a trade between two nations 
which enriches one. impoverishes the other in the same degree, the sound 
economist considers it an unproductive trade between the nations. It is 
not a general question of political economy, but only a particular question 
of local expediency, whether an article in itself valueless, may bear a value 
of exchange in transactions with some other nation. The economist con- 
siders only the actual value of the thing done or produced; and if he sees a 
quantity of labour spent, for instance, by the Swiss, in producing woodwork 
for sale to the English, he at once sets the commercial impoverishment of the 
English purchaser against the commercial enrichment of the Swiss seller; and 
considers the whole transaction productive only so far as the woodwork itself is a 
real addition to the wealth of the world. Eor the arrangement of the laws of a 
nation so as to procure the greatest advantages to itself, and leave the smallest 
advantages to other nations, is not a part of the science of political economy, 
but merely a broad application of the science of fraud. Considered thus in 
the abstract, pictures are not an addition to the monetary wealth of the world, 
except in the amount of pleasure or instruction to be got out of them day by 
day : but there is a certain protective effect on wealth exercised by works 
of high art which must always be included in the estimate of their value. 
Generally speaking, persons who decorate their houses with pictures, will 
not spend so much money in papers, carpets, curtains, or other expensive and 
perishable luxuries as they would otherwise. "Works of good art, like books, 
exercise a conservative effect on the rooms they are kept in ; and the wall 
of the library or picture gallery remains undisturbed, when those of other 
rooms are re-papered or re-panelled. Of course this effect is still more defi- 
nite when the picture is on the walls themselves, either on canvass stretched 
into fixed shapes on their panels, or in fresco ; involving, of course, the pre- 
servation of the building from all unnecessary and capricious alteration. And 
generally speaking, the occupation of a large number of hands in painting or 
sculpture in an}' nation may be considered as tending to check the disposition 
to indulge in perishable luxury. I do not, however, in my assumption that 
works of art are treasures, take much into consideration this collateral mone- 
tary result. I consider them treasures, merely as a permanent means of 
pleasure and instruction ; and having at other times tried to show the several 
ways in which they can please and teach, assume here that they are thus use 
ful ; and that it is desirable to make as many painters as we can. 

5* 



106 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

This is not so It is difficult to analyse the characters of mind 
which cause youths to mistake their vocation, and to endeavour to 
become artists, when they have no true artist's gift. But the fact 
is, that multitudes of young men do this, and that by far the 
greater number of living artists are men who have mistaken thtir 
vocation. The peculiar circumstances of modern life, which exhi- 
bit art in almost every form to the sight of the youths in our great 
cities, have a natural tendency to fill their imaginations with bor- 
rowed ideas, and their minds with imperfect science ; the mere dis- 
like of mechanical employments, either felt to be irksome, or 
believed to be degrading, urges numbers of young men to become 
painters, in the same temper in which they would enlist or go to 
sea ; others, the sons of engravers or artists, taught the business ol 
the art by their parents, and having no gift for it themselves, follow 
it as the means of livelihood, in an ignoble patience ; or, if ambi- 
tious, seek to attract regard, or distance rivalry, by fantastic, mere- 
tricious, or unprecedented applications of their mechanical skill ; 
while finally, many men earnest in feeling, and conscientious in 
principle, mistake their desire to be useful for a love of art, and 
their quickness of emotion for its capacity, and pass their lives in 
painting moral and instructive pictures, which might almost justify 
us in thinking nobody could be a painter but a rogue. On the 
other hand, I believe that much of the best artistical intellect is 
daily lost in other avocations. Generally, the temper which would 
make an admirable artist is humble and observant, capable of 
taking much interest in little things, and of entertaining itself 
pleasantly in the dullest circumstances. Suppose, added to these 
characters, a steady conscientiousness which seeks to do its duty 
wherever it may be placed, and the power, denied to few artistical 
minds, of ingenious invention in almost any practical department 
of human skill, and it can hardly be doubted that the very 
humility and conscientiousness which would have perfected the 
painter, have in many instances prevented his becoming one ; 
and that in the quiet life of our steady craftsmen — sagacious manu- 
facturers, and uncomplaining clerks — there may frequently be com 
cealed more genius than ever is raised to the direction of our pub- 
lic works, or to be the mark of our public praises. 



ADDENDA. 107 

It is indeed probable, that intense disposition for art will con- 
quer the most formidable obstacles, if the surrounding circumstances 
are such as at all to present the idea of such conquest to the mind : 
but we have no ground for concluding that Giotto would ever have 
been more than a shepherd, if Cimabue had not by chance found 
him drawing ; or that among the shepherds of the Apennines there 
were no other Giottos, undiscovered by Cimabue. We are too 
much in the habit of considering happy accidents as what are 
called "special Providences;" and thinking that when any great 
work needs to be done, the man who is to do it will certainly be 
pointed out by Providence, be he shepherd or sea-boy ; and pre- 
pared for his work by all kinds of minor providences, in the best 
possible way. Whereas all the analogies of God's operations in 
other matters prove the contrary of this ; we find that " of 
thousand seeds, He often brings but one to bear," often not one ; 
and the one seed which He appoints to bear is allowed to bear 
crude or perfect fruit according to the dealings of the husbandman 
with it. And there cannot be a doubt in the mind of any person 
accustomed to take broad and logical views of the world's history, 
that its events are ruled by Providence in precisely the same man- 
ner as its harvests ; that the seeds of good and evil are broadcast 
among men, just as the seeds of thistles and fruits are; and that 
according to the force of our industry, and wisdom of our hus- 
bandry, the ground will bring forth to us figs or thistles. So that 
when it seems needed that a certain work should be done for the 
world, and no man is there to do it, we have no right to say that 
God did not wish it to be done ; and therefore sent no man able 
to do it. The probability (if I wrote my own convictions, I 
should say certainty) is, that He sent many men, hundreds of men, 
able to do it ; and that we have rejected them, or crushed them ; 
by our previous folly of conduct or of institution, we have rendered 
it impossible to distinguish, or impossible to reach them; and 
when the need for them comes, and we suffer for the want of 
them, it is not that God refuses to send us deliverers, and specially 
appoints all our consequent sufferings ; but that He has sent, and 
we have refused, the deliverers ; and the pain is then wrought out 
by His eternal law, as surely as famine is wrought out by eternal 



108 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

law for a nation which, will neither plough nor sow. No le^s are 
we in en or in supposing, as we so frequently do, that if a man be 
found, he is sure to be in all respects fitted for the work to br« 
done, as the key is to the lock : and that every accident which 
happened in the forging him, only adapted him more truly to the 
wards. It is pitiful to hear historians beguiling themselves and 
their readers, by tracing in the early history of great men, the 
minor circumstances which fitted them for the work they did, 
without ever taking notice of the other circumstances which as 
assuredly unfitted them for it ; so concluding that miraculous in- 
terposition prepared them in all points for everything, and that 
they did all that could have been desired or hoped for from them : 
whereas the certainty of the matter is that, throughout their lives, 
they were thwarted and corrupted by some things as certainly as 
they were helped and disciplined by others; and that, in the 
kindliest and most reverent view which can justly be taken of 
them, they were but poor mistaken creatures, struggling with a 
world more profoundly mistaken than they ; — assuredly sinned 
against, or sinning in thousands of wavs, and brino-ing out at last 
a jnaimed result — not what they might or ought to have done, 
but all that could be done against the world's resistance, and in 
spite of their own sorrowful falsehood to themselves. 

And this being so, it is the practical duty of a w r ise nation, first 
to withdraw, as far as may be, its youth from destructive influ- 
ences; — then to try its material as far as possible, and to lose the 
use of none that is good. I do not mean by " withdrawing from 
destructive influences" the keeping of youths out of trials; but 
the keeping them out of the way of things purely and absolutely 
mischievous. I do not mean that we should shade our green corn 
in all heat, and shelter it in all frost, but only that we should 
dvke oVit the inundation from it, and drive the fowls away from 
it Let your youth labour and suffer ; but do not let it starve, 
nor steal, nor blaspheme. 

It is not, of course, in my power hereto enter into details of schemes 
of education ; and it will be long before the results of experiments 
now in progress will give data for the solution of the most difficult 
questions connected with the subject, of which the principal one is 



ADDENDA. 109 

the mode in which the chance of advancement in life is to be ex- 
tended to all, and yet made compatible with contentment in the 
pursuit of lower avocations by those whose abilities do not qualify 
them for the higher. But the general principle of trial schools 
lies at the root of the matter — of schools, that is to say, in which 
the knowledge offered and discipline enforced shall be all a part 
of a great assay of the human soul, and in which the one shall be 
increased, the other directed, as the tried heart and brain will best 
bear, and no otherwise. One thing, however, I must say, that in 
this trial I believe all emulation to be a false motive, and all giv- 
ing of prizes a false means. All that you can depend upon in a 
boy, as significative of true power, likely to issue in good fruit, is 
his will to w^ork for the work's sake, not his desire to surpass his 
school-fellows ; and the aim of the teaching you give him ought to 
be, to prove to him and strengthen in him his own separate gift, 
not to puff him into swollen rivalry with those who are everlast- 
ingly greater than he : still less ought you to hang favours and 
ribands about the neck of the creature who is the greatest, to make 
the rest envy him. Try to make them love him and follow him, 
not struggle with him. 

There must, of course, be examination to ascertain and attest 
both progress and relative capacity ; but our aim should be to make 
the students rather look upon it as a means of ascertaining their 
own true positions and powers in the world, than as an arena in 
which to carry away a present victory. I have not, perhaps, in 
the course of the lecture, insisted enough on the nature of relative 
capacity and individual character, as the roots of all real value in 
Art. We are too much in the habit, in these days, of acting as if 
Art worth a price in the market were a commodity which people 
could be generally taught to produce, and as if the education of the 
artist, not his capacity, gave the sterling value to his work. No 
impression can possibly be more absurd or false. Whatever peo- 
ple can teach each other to do, they will estimate, and ought to 
estimate, only as common industry ; nothing will ever fetch a high 
price but precisely that w r hich cannot be taught, and which nobody 
can do but the man from whom it is purchased. No state of 
society, nor stage of knowledge, ever does away with the natural 



110 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

pre-eminence of one man over another ; and it is that pre-emi- 
nence, and that only, which will give work high value in the mar- 
ket, or which ought to do so. It is a bad sign of the judgment, 
and bad omen for the progress, of a nation, if it supposes itself to 
possess many artists of equal merit. Noble art is nothing less than 
the expression of a great soul ; and great souls are not common 
things. If ever we confound their work with that of others, it is 
not through liberality, but through, blindness. 



Note 4th, p. 26.—" Public favour." 

There is great difficulty in making any short or general state- 
ment of the difference between great and ignoble minds in their 
behaviour to the M public." It is by no means universally the case 
that a mean mind, as stated in the text, will bend itself to what 
you ask of it : on the contrary, there is one kind of mind, the 
meanest of all, which perpetually complains of the public, contem- 
plates and proclaims itself as a " genius," refuses all wholesome dis- 
cipline or humble office, and ends in miserable and revengeful ruin ; 
also, the greatest minds are marked by nothing more distinctly 
than an inconceivable humility, and acceptance of work or instruc- 
tion in any form, and from any quarter. They will learn from 
everybody, and do anything that anybody asks of them, so long as 
it involves only toil, or what other men would think degradation. 
But the point of quarrel, nevertheless, assuredly rises some day 
between the public and them, respecting some matter, not of hu- 
miliation, but of Fact. Your great man always at last comes to 
see something the public don't see. This something he will 
assuredly persist in asserting, whether with tongue or pencil, to be 
as he sees it, not as they see it ; and all the world in a heap on the 
other side, will not get him to say otherwise. Then, if the world 
objects to the saying, he may happen to get stoned or burnt for it, 
hut that does not in the least matter to him : if the world has no 
particular objection to the saying, he may get leave to mutter it to 
himself till he dies, and be merely taken for an idiot ; that also 
does not matter to him — mutter it he will, according to what he 



ADDENDA. 1 1 1 

perceives to be fact, and not at all according to the roaring of the 
walls of Red sea on the right hand or left of him. Hence the 
quarrel, sure at some time or other, to be started between the pub- 
lic and him ; while your mean man, though he will spit and scratch 
spiritedly at the public, while it does not attend to him, will bow 
to it for its clap in any direction, and say anything when he has 
got its ear, wmich he thinks will bring him another clap ; and thus, 
as stated in the text, he and it go on smoothly together. 

There are, however, times when the obstinacy of the mean man 
looks very like the obstinacy of the great one ; but if you look 
closely into the matter, you will always see that the obstinacy of 
the first is in the pronunciation of " I ;" and of the second, in the 
pronunciation of " It." 



Note 5th, p. 41. — " Invention of new wants? 

It would have been impossible for political economists long to 
have endured the error spoken of in the text,* had they not been 

* I have given the political economists too much credit in saying this 
Actually, while these sheets are passing through the press, the blunt, broad, 
unmitigated fallacy is enunciated, formally and precisely, by the common 
councilmen of New York, in their report on the present commercial crisis. 
Here is their collective opinion, published in the Times of November 23rd, 
1857 : — " Another erroneous idea is that luxurious living, extravagant dress- 
ing, splendid turn-outs aud fine houses, are the cause of distress to a nation. 
No more erroneous impression could exist Every extravagance that the 
man of 100,000 or 1,000,000 dollars indulges in adds to the means, the sup- 
port, the wealth of ten or a hundred who had little or nothing else but their 
labour, their intellect, or their taste. If a man of 1,000,000 dollars spends 
principal and mterest in ten years, and finds himself beggared at the end of 
that time, he has actually made a hundred who have catered to his extrava- 
gance, employers or employed, so much richer by the division of his wealth. 
He may be ruined, but the nation is better off and richer, for one hundred 
minds and hands, with 10,000 dollars apiece, are far more productive than 
one with the whole." 

Yes, gentlemen of the common council ; but what has been doing in the 
time of the transfer ? The spending of the fortune has taken a certain num- 
ber of years (suppose ten), and during that time 1,000.000 dollars worth of 



112 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

confused by an idea, in part well founded, that the energies and re 
finements, as well as the riches of civilized life, arose from imagin- 
ary wants. It is quite true, that the savage who knows no reeds 
but those of food, shelter, and sleep, and after he has snared his 
venison and patched the rents of his hut, passes the rest of his 
time in animal repose, is in a lower state than the man who labours 
incessantly that he may procure for himself the luxuries of civiliza- 
tion ; and true also, that the difference between one and another 
nation in progressive power depends in great part on vain desires ; 
but these idle motives are merely to be considered as giving exer- 
cise to the national body and mind ; they are not sources of wealth, 
except so far as they give the habits of industry and acquisitiveness. 
If a boy is clumsy and lazy, we shall do good if we can persuade 
him to carve cherry-stones and fly kites ; and this use of his fingers 
and limbs may eventually be the cause of his becoming a wealthy 
and happy man ; but we must not therefore argue that cherry-stones 
are valuable property, or that kite-flying is a profitable mode of pass- 
ing time. In like manner, a nation always wastes its time and 
labour directly, when it invents a new want of a frivolous kind, 
and yet the invention of such a want may be the sign of a healthy 
activity, and the labour undergone to satisfy the new want may 
lead, indirectly, to useful discoveries or to noble arts ; so that a 
nation is not to be discouraged in its fancies when it is either too 

work has been done by the people, who have been paid that sum for it. 
"Where is the product of that work? By your own statement, wholly con- 
sumed ; for the man for whom it has been done is now a beggar. You have 
given therefore, as a nation, 1,000,000 dollars worth of work, and ten years 
of time, and you have produced, as ultimate result, one beggar! Excellent 
economy, gentlemen ; and sure to conduce, in due sequence, to the produc- 
tion of more than one beggar. Perhaps the matter may be made clearer to 
you, however, by a more familiar instance. If a schoolboy goes out in the 
morning with five shillings in his pocket, and comes home at night penniless, 
naving spent his all in tarts, prir cipal and interest are gone, and fruiterer 
and baker are enriched. So far so good. But suppose the schoolboy, instead, 
has bought a book and a knife ; principal and interest are gone, and book- 
seller and cutler are enriched. But the schoolboy is enriched also, and may 
help his schoolfellows next day with knife and book, instead of lying in bed 
and incurring a debt to the doctor. 



ADDENDA. 113 

weak or foolish to be moved to exertion by anything but fancies, 
or has attended to its serious business first. If a nation will not 
forge iron, but likes distilling lavender, by all means give it laven- 
der to distil ; only do not let its economists suppose that lavender 
is as profitable to it as oats, or that it helps poor people to live, 
any more than the schoolboy's kite provides him his dinner. 
Luxuries, whether national or personal, must be paid for by labour 
withdrawn from useful things; and no nation has a right to 
indulge in them until all its poor are comfortably housed and fed. 
The enervating influence of luxury, and its tendencies to increase 
vice, are points which I keep entirely out of consideration in the 
present essay : but, so far as they bear on any question discussed, 
they merely furnish additional evidence on the side which I have 
taken. Thus, in the present case, I assume that the luxuries of 
civilized life are in possession harmless, and in acquirement, ser- 
viceable as a motive for exertion ; and even on these favourable 
terms, we arrive at the conclusion that the nation ought not to 
indulge in them except under severe limitations. Much less ought 
it to indulge in them if the temptation consequent on their posses- 
sion, or fatality incident to their manufacture, more than counter- 
balances the good done by the effort to obtain them. 



Note 6th, p. 52. — " Economy of Literature.' 1 '' 

I have been much impressed lately by one of the results of the 
quantity of our books ; namely, the stern impossibility of getting 
anything understood, that required patience to understand. I 
observe always, in the case of my own writings, that if ever I 
state anything which has cost me any trouble to ascertain, and 
which, therefore, will probably require a minute or two of reflec- 
tion from the reader before it can be accepted, — that statement 
will not only be misunderstood, but in all probability taken to 
mean something very nearly the reverse of what it does mean. 
Now, whatever faults there may be in my modes of expression, I 
know that the words I use will always be found, by Johnson's die 



J 14 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

tionary, to bear, first of all, the sense I use them in ; an I that the 
sentences, whether awkwardly turned or not, will, by the ordinary 
rules of grammar, bear no other interpretation than that I mean 
them to bear ; so that the misunderstanding of them must result, 
ultimately, from the mere fact that their matter sometimes requires 
a little patience. And I see the same kind of misinterpretation 
put on the words of other writers, whenever they require the same 
kind of thought. 

I was at first a little despondent about this ; but, on the whole, 
I believe it will have a good effect upon our literature for some 
time to come ; and then, perhaps, the public may recover its 
patience again. For certainly it is excellent discipline for an 
author to feel that he must say all he has to say in the fewest pos- 
sible words, or his reader is sure to skip them ; and in the plainest 
possible words, or his reader will certainly misunderstand them. 
Generally, also, a downright fact may be told in a plain way; and 
we want downright facts at present more than anything else. And 
though I often hear moral people complaining of the bad effects 
of want of thought, for my part, it seems to me that one of the 
worst diseases to which the human creature is liable is its disease 
of thinking. If it would only just look* at a thing instead of 
thinking what it must be like, or do a thing, instead of thinking it 
cannot be done, we should all get on far better. 

* There can be no question, however, of the mischievous tendency of the 
hurry of the present day, in the way people undertake this very looking. I 
gave three years' close and incessant labour to the examination of the chro- 
nology of the architecture of Venice ; two long winters being wholly spent 
in the drawing of details on the spot: and j-et I see constantly that architects 
who pass three or four days in a gondola going up and down the grand canal, 
think that their first impressions are just as likely to be true as my patiently 
wrought conclusions. Mr. Street, for instance, glances hastily at the facade 
of the Ducal Palace — so hastily that he does not even see what its pattern 
is, and misses the alternation of red and black in the centres of its squares^ 
and yet he instantly ventures on an opinion on the chronology of its capitals, 
which is one of the most complicated and difficult subjects in the whole range 
of Gothic archaeology. It may, nevertheless, be ascertained with very fait 
probability of correctness by any person who will give a month's hard work 
to it, hut it can be ascertained no otherwise. 



ADDENDA. 



MS 



Note 7th, p. 93.— u Pilots of the State." 

TVhile, however, undoubtedly, these responsibilities attach to 
every person possessed of wealth, it is necessary both to avoid any 
stringency of statement respecting the benevolent modes of spend- 
ing money, and to admit and approve so much liberty of spend- 
ing it for selfish pleasures as may distinctly make wealth a personal 
reward for toil, and secure in the minds of all men the right of 
property. For although, without doubt, the purest pleasures it 
can procure are not selfish, it is only as a means of personal grati- 
fication that it will be desired by a large majority of workers ; and 
it would be no less false ethics than false policy to check their 
energy by any forms of public opinion which bore hardly against 
the wanton expenditure of honestly got wealth. It would be hard 
if a man who had passed the greater part of his life at the desk 
or counter could not at last innocently gratify a caprice ; and all 
the best and most sacred ends of almsgiving would be at once dis- 
appointed, if the idea of a moral claim took the place of affection- 
ate gratitude in the mind of the receiver. 

Some distinction is made by us naturally in this respect between 
earned and inherited wealth ; that which is inherited appearing to 
involve the most definite responsibilities, especially when consisting 
in revenues derived from the soil. The form of taxation which 
constitutes rental of lands places annually a certain portion of the 
national wealth in the hands of the nobles, or other proprietors of 
the soil, under conditions peculiarly calculated to induce them to 
give their best care to its efficient administration. The want 
of instruction in even the simplest principles of commerce and 
economy, which hitherto has disgraced our schools and universi- 
ties, has indeed been the cause of ruin or total inutility of life to 
multitudes of our men of estate ; but this deficiency in our public 
education cannot exist much longer, and it appears to be highly 
advantageous for the State that a certain number of persons dis- 
tinguished by race should be permitted to set examples of wise 
expenditure, whether in the advancement of science, or in patron- 
age of art and literature ; only they must see to it that they take 



116 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

their right standing more firmly than they have done hitherto 
for the position of a rich man in relation to those around him 
is, in our present real life, and is also contemplated generally by 
political economists as being, precisely the reverse of what it 
ought to be. A rich man ought to be continually examining how 
he may spend his money for the advantage of others ; at present, 
others are continually plotting how they may beguile him into 
spending it apparently for his own. The aspect which he presents 
to the eyes of the world is generally that of a person holding a 
bag of money with a staunch grasp, and resolved to part with 
none of it unless he is forced, and all the people about him are 
plotting how they may force him ; that is to say, how they may 
persuade him that he wants this thing or that ; or how they may 
produce things that he will covet and buy. One man tries to per 
suade, him that he wants perfumes ; another that he wants jewel- 
lery; another that he wants sugarplums; another that he wants 
roses at Christmas. Anybody who can invent a new want for him 
is supposed to be a benefactor to society ; and thus the energies 
of the poorer people about him are continually directed to the 
production ofcovetable, instead of serviceable things; and the rich 
man has the general aspect of a fool, plotted against by all the 
world. Whereas the real aspect which he ought to have is that 
of a person wiser than others, entrusted with the management of 
a larger quantity of capital, which he administers for the profit of 
all, directing each man to the labour which is most healthy for 
him, and most serviceable for the community. 



Note 8th, p. 93.—" Silk and Purple." 

In various places throughout these lectures I have had to allude 
to the distinction between productive and unproductive labour, 
and between true and false wealth. I shall here endeavour, as 
clearly as I can, to explain the distinction I mean. 

Property may be divided generally into two kinds ; that which 
produces life, and that which produces the objects of life. That 
which produces or maintains life consists of food, in so *kr as it is 



ADDENDA. 117 

nourishing ; of furniture and clothing, in so far as they are pro • 
tective or cherishing ; of fuel ; and of all land, instruments, or 
materials, necessary to produce food, houses, clothes, and fuel. It 
is specially and rightly called useful property. 

The property which produces the objects of life consists of all 
that gives pleasure or suggests and preserves thought : of food, 
furniture, and land, in so far as they are pleasing to the appetite or 
the eye ; of luxurious dress, and all other kinds of luxuries ; of 
books, pictures, and architecture. But the modes of connection 
of certain minor forms of property with human labour render it 
desirable to arrange them under more than these two heads. 
Property may therefore be conveniently considered as of five 
kinds. 

1st. Property necessary to life, but not producible by labour, 
and therefore belonging of right, in a due measure, to every 
human being as soon as he is born, and morally inalienable. As 
for instance, his proper share of the atmosphere, without which he 
cannot breathe, and of water, which he needs to quench his thirst. 
As much land as he needs to feed from is also inalienable; but in 
well regulated communities this quantity of land may often be 
represented by other possessions, or its need supplied by wages 
and privileges. 

2. Property necessary to life, but only producible by labour, 
and of which the possession is morally connected with labour, so 
that no person capable of doing the work necessary for its pro- 
duction has a right to it until he has done that work ; — " he that 
will not work, neither should he eat." It consists of simple food, 
clothing, and habitation, with their seeds and materials, or instru- 
ments and machinery, and animals used for necessary draught or 
locomotion, &c. It is to be observed of this kind of property, 
that its increase cannot usually be carried beyond a certain point, 
because it depends not on labour only, but on things of which the 
supply is limited by nature. The possible accumulation of corn 
depends on the quantity of corn-growing land possessed or com- 
mercially accessible ; and that of steel, similarly, on the accessible 
quantity of coal arid ironstone. It follows from this natural 
limitation of supply that the accumulation of property of this kind 



118 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

in large masses at one point, or in one person's hands, commcnly 
involves, more or less, the scarcity of it at another point and in 
other persons' hands; so that the accidents or energies which may 
enable one man to procure a great deal of it, may, and in all like- 
lihood will partially prevent other men procuring a sufficiency of 
it, however willing they maybe to work for it; therefore, the 
modes of its accumulation and distribution need to be in some 
degree regulated by law and by national treaties, in order to 
secure justice to all men. 

Another point requiring notice respecting this sort of property 
is, that no work can. be wasted in producing it, provided only the 
kind of it produced be preservable and distributable, since for 
every grain of such commodities we produce we are rendering so 
much more life possible on earth.* But though we are sure, thus, 
that we are employing people well, we cannot be sure we might 
not have employed them better ; for it is possible to direct labour 
to the production of life, until little or none is left for that of the 
objects of life, and thus to increase population at the expense of 

* This point has sometimes been disputed; for instance, opening Mill's 
Political Economy the other day, I chanced on a passage in which he says 
that a man who makes a coat, if the person who wears the coat does nothing 
useful while he wears it, has done no more good to society than the man 
who has only raised a pine-apple. But this is a fallacy induced by endeavour 
after too much subtlety. None of us have a right to say that the life of a 
man is if no use to him, though it may be of no use to us ; and the man 
who made the coat, and thereby prolonged another man's life, has done a 
gracious and useful work, whatever may come of the life so prolonged. We 
may say to the wearer of the coat, " You who are wearing coats, and doing 
nothing in them, are at present wasting your own life and other people's;" 
but we have no right to say that his existence, however wasted, is wasted 
away. It may be just dragging itself on, in its thin golden line, with nothing 
dependent upon it, to the point where it is to strengthen into good chain 
cable, and have thousands of other lives dependent on it. Meantime, tho 
simple fact respecting the coat-maker is, that he has given so much life to 
the creature, the results of which he cannot calculate ; they may be — in all 
probability will be — infinite results in some way. But the raiser of pines, 
who has only given a pleasant taste in the mouth to some one, may see with 
tolerable clearness to the end of the taste in the mouth, and of all conceiv- 
able results therefrom. 



ADDENDA. 119 

civilization, learning, and morality : on the other hand, it is jnst 
as possible — and the error is one to which the world is, on the 
whole, more liable — to direct labour to the objects of life till too 
little is left for life, and thus to increase luxury or learning at the 
expense of population. Right political economy holds its aim 
poised jnstly between the two extremes, desiring neither to crowd 
its dominions with a race of savages, nor to found courts and 
colleges in the midst of a desert. 

3. The third kind of property is that which conduces to bodily 
pleasures and conveniences, without directly tending to sustain 
life ; perhaps sometimes indirectly tending to destroy it. All 
dainty (as distinguished from nourishing) food, and means of pro- 
ducing it ; all scents not needed for health ; substances valued 
only for their appearance and rarity (as gold and jewels) ; flowers 
of difficult culture ; animals used for delight (as horses for racing), 
and such like, form property of this class ; to which the term 
I luxury, or luxuries," ought exclusively to belong. 

Respecting which we have to note, first, that all such property 
is of doubtful advantage even to its possessor. Furniture tempting 
to indolence, sweet odours, and luscious food, are more or less in- 
jurious to health : while, jewels, liveries, and other such common 
belongings of wealthy people, certainly convey no pleasure to 
their owners proportionate to their cost. 

Farther, such property, for the most part, perishes in the using. 
Jewels form a great exception — but rich food, fine dresses, horses 
and carriages, are consumed by the owner's use. It ought much 
oftener be brought to the notice of rich men what sums of interest 
of money they are paying towards the close of their lives, for luxu- 
ries consumed in the middle of them. It would be very interest- 
ing, for instance, to know the exact sum which the money spent 
in London for ices, at its desserts and balls, during the last twenty 
years had it been saved and put out at compound interest, would 
at this moment have furnished for useful purposes. 

Also, in most cases, the enjoyment of such property is wholly 
selfish, and limited to its possessor. Splendid dress and equipage, 
however, when so arranged as to produce real beauty of effect, may 
often be lather a generous than a selfish channel of expenditure. 



120 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

They will, however, necessarily in such case involve seme of the 
arts of design ; and therefore take their place in a higher category 
than that of luxuries merely. 

4. The fourth kind of property is that which bestows intellectual 
or emotional pleasure, consisting of land set apart for purposes of 
delight more than for agriculture, of books, works of art, and 
objects of natural history. 

It is, of course, impossible to fix an accurate limit between pro- 
perty of the last class and of this class, since things which are a 
mere luxury to one person are a means of intellectual occupation 
to another. Flowers in a London ball-room are a luxury; in a 
botanical garden, a delight of the intellect ; and in their native 
fields, both ; while the most noble works of art are continually 
made material of vulgar luxury or of criminal pride ; but, when 
rightly used, property of this fourth class is the only kind which 
deserves the name of real property ; it is the only kind which a 
man can truly be said to " possess." What a man eats, or drinks, 
or wears, so long as it is only what is needful for life, can no more 
be thought of as his possession than the air he breathes. The air 
is as needful to him as the food ; but we do not talk of a man's 
wealth of air, and what food or clothing a man possesses more than 
he himself requires, must be for others to use (and, to him, there- 
fore, not a real property in itself, but only a means of obtaining 
some real property in exchange for it). Whereas the things thai 
give intellectual or emotional enjoyment may be accumulated and 
do not perish in using ; but continually supply new pleasures and 
new powers of giving pleasures to others. And these, therefore, 
are the only -things which can rightly be thought of as giving 
" wealth " or " well being." Food conduces only to " being," but 
these to " well being." And there is not any broader general dis- 
tinction between lower and higher orders of men than rests on 
their possession of this real property. The human race may be 
properly divided by zoologists into " men who have gardens, libra- 
ries, or works of art; and who have none;" and the former class 
will include all noble persons, except only a few who make the 
world their garden or museum ; while the people who have not, 
or, which is the same thing, do not care for gardens or libraries, 



ADDENDA. 121 

but care for nothing but money or luxuries, will include none but 
ignoble persons : only it is necessary to understand that I mean by 
the term " garden " as much the Carthusian's plot of ground fifteen 
feet square between his monastery buttresses, as I do the grounds 
of Chatsworth or Kew ; and I mean by the term " art " as much 
the old sailor's print of the Arethusa bearing up to engage the 
Belle Poule, as I do Raphael's " Disputa," and even rather more ; 
for when abundant, beautiful possessions of this kind are almost 
always associated with vulgar luxury, and become then anything 
but indicative of noble character in their possessors. The ideal of 
human life is a union of Spartan simplicity of manners with Athe- 
nian sensibility and imagination, but in actual results, we are con- 
tinually mistaking ignorance for simplicity, and sensuality for 
refinement. 

5. The fifth kind of property is representative property, consist- 
ing of documents or money, or rather documents only, for money 
itself is only a transferable document, current among societies of 
men, giving claim, at sight, to some definite benefit or advantage, 
most commonly to a certain share of real property existing in those 
societies. The money is only genuine when the property it gives 
claim to is real, or the advantages it gives claim to certain ; other- 
wise, it is false money, and may be considered as much "forged'' 
vhen issued by a government, or a bank, as when by an individual. 
1 hus, if a dozen of men, cast ashore on a desert island, pick up a 
immber of stones, put a red spot on each stone, and pass a law 
tnat every stone marked with a red spot shall give claim to a peck 
of wheat ; — so long as no wheat exists, or can exist, on the island, 
the stones are not money. But the moment so much wheat exists 
as shall render it possible for the society always to give a peck for 
every spotted stone, the spotted stones would become money, and 
might be exchanged by their possessors for whatever other com- 
modities they chose, to the value of the peck of wheat which the 
stones represented. If- more stones were issued than the quantity 
of wheat could answer the demand of, the value of the stone 
coinage would be depreciated, in proportion to its increase above 
the quantity needed to answer it. 
. Again, supposing a certain number of the men so cast ashore 

6 



122 POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

were set aside by lot, or any other convention, to do the roru. i& 
labour necessary for the whole society, they themselves being 
maintained by the daily allotment of a certain quantity of food, 
clothing, &c. Then, if it were agreed that the stones spotted with 
red should be signs of a Government order for the labour of these 
men ; and that any person presenting a spotted stone at the office 
of the labourers, should be entitled to a man's work for a week 
or a day, the red stones would be money ; and might — probably 
would, — immediately pass current in the island for as much food, 
or clothing, or iron, or any other article as a man's work for the 
period secured by the stone was worth. But if the Government 
issued so many spotted stones that it was impossible for the body 
of men they employed to comply with the orders ; as, suppose, if 
they only employed twelve men, and issued eighteen spotted stones 
daily, ordering a day's work each, then the six extra stones would 
be forged or false money ; and the effect of this forgery would be 
the depreciation of the value of the whole coinage by one-third, 
that being the period of shortcoming which would, on the average, 
necessarily ensue in the execution of each order. Much occasional 
work may be done in a state or society, by help of an issue of false 
money (or false promises) by way of stimulants ; and the fruit of 
this work, if it comes into the promiser's hands, may sometimes 
enable the false promises at last to be fulfilled : hence the frequent 
issue of false money by governments and banks, and the not unfre- 
quent escapes from the natural and proper consequences of such 
false issues, so as to cause a confused conception in most people's 
minds of what money really is. I am not sure whether some 
quantity of such false issue may not really be permissible in a 
nation, accurately proportioned to the minimum average produce 
of the labour it excites; but all such procedures are more or less 
unsound ; and the notion of unlimited issue of currency is simply 
one of the absurdest and most monstrous that ever came into dis- 
jointed human wits. 

r ttie use of objects of real or supposed value for currency, as 
gold, jewellery, &c, is barbarous; and it always expresses either 
the measure of the distrust in the society of its own government, 
or the proportion of distrustful or barbarous nations with whom it 



ADDENDA. 12-i 

has to deal. A metal not easily corroded or imitated, is a desirable 
medium of currency for the sake of cleanliness and convenience, 
but were it possible to prevent forgery, the more worthless the 
metal itself, the better. The use of worthless media, unrestrained 
by the use of valuable media, has always hitherto involved, and is 
therefore supposed to involve necessarily, unlimited, or at least 
improperly extended, issue ; but we might as well suppose that a 
man must necessarily issue unlimited promises because his words 
cost nothing. Intercourse with foreign nations must, indeed, for 
ages yet to come, at the world's present rate of progress, be car- 
ried on by valuable currencies; but such transactions are nothing 
more than forms of barter. The gold used at present as a currency 
is not, in point of fact, currency at all, but the real property* 
which the currency gives claim to, stamped to measure its quan- 
tity, and mingling with the real currency occasionally by barter. 

The evils necessarily resulting from the use of baseless curren- 
cies have been terribly illustrated while these sheets have been 
passing through the press ; I have not had time to examine the 
various conditions of dishonest or absurd trading which have led 
to the late " panic" in America and England ; this only I know, 
that no merchant deserving the name ought to be more liable to 
"panic" than a soldier should ; for his name should never be on 
more paper than he can at any instant meet the call of, happen 
what will. I do not say this without feeling at the same time 
bow difficult it is to mark, in existing commerce, the just limits 
between the spirit of enterprise and of speculation. Something of 

* Or rather, equivalent to such real property, because everybody has been 
accustomed to look upon it as valuable ; and therefore everybody is willing 
to give labour or goods for it. But real property does ultimately consist only 
in things that nourish the body or mind ; gold would be useless to us if we 
could not get mutton or books for it. Ultimately all commercial mistakes 
and embarrassments result from people expecting to get goods without work- 
ing for them, or wasting them after they have got them. A nation which 
labours, and takes care of the fruits of labour, would be rich and happy ; 
though there were no gold in the universe. A nation which is idle, and 
wastes the produce of what work it does, would be poor and miserable, 
though all its mountains were of gold, and had glens rilled with diamond 
instead of glacier. 



124- POLITICAL ECONOMY OF ART. 

the same temper which makes the English soldier do always al 
that is possible, and attempt more than is possible, joins its influ- 
ence with that of mere avarice in tempting the English merchant 
into risks which he cannot justify, and efforts which he cannot 
sustain ; and the same passion for adventure which our travellers 
gratify every summer on perilous snow wreaths, and cloud-encom- 
passed precipices, surrounds with a romantic fascination the glit- 
tering of a hollow 7 investment, and gilds the clouds that curl round 
gulfs of ruin. Nay, a higher and a more serious feeling frequently 
mingles in the motley temptation ; and men apply themselves to 
the task of growing rich, as to a labour of providential appoint- 
ment, from which they cannot pause without culpability, nor retire 
without dishonour. Our large trading cities bear to me very 
nearly the aspect of monastic establishments in which the roar of 
the mill-wheel and the crane takes the place of other devotion;d 
music : and in which the worship of Mammon aud Moloch is con- 
ducted with a tender reverence and an exact propriety : the mer- 
chant rising to his Mammon matins with the self-denial of an ancho- 
rite, and expiating the frivolities into which he may be beguiled in 
the course of the day by late attendance at Mammon vespers. 
But, with every allowauce that can be made for these conscien- 
tious and romantic persons, the fact remains the same, that by far 
the oreater number of the transactions which lead to these times 
of commercial embarrassment may be ranged simply under two 
great heads, — gambling and stealing; and both of these in their 
most culpable form, namely, gambling with money which is not 
ours, and stealing from those who trust us. I have sometimes 
thought a day might come, when the nation would perceive that 
a well-educated man who steals a hundred thousand pounds, involv- 
ing the entire means of subsistence of a hundred families, deserves, 
on the whole, as severe a punishment as an ill-educated man 
who steals a purse from a pocket, or a mug from a pantry. But 
without hoping for this success of clear-sightedness, we may at 
least labour for a system of greater honesty and kindness in the 
minor commerce of our daily life ; since the great dishonesty of 
the great buyers and sellers is nothing more than the natural 
growth and outcome from the little dishonesty of the little buyers 



ADDENDA. 125 

and sellers. Every person who tries to buy an article for Jess than 
its proper value, or who tries to sell it at more than its proper 
value — every consumer who keeps a tradesman waiting for his 
money, and every tradesman who bribes a consumer to extrava- 
gance by credit, is helping forward, according to his own measure 
of power, a system of baseless and dishonourable commerce, and 
forcing his country down into poverty and shame. And people 
of moderate means and average powers of mind would do far more 
real good by merely carrying out stern principles of justice and 
honesty in common matters of trade, than by the most ingenious 
schemes of extended philanthropy, or vociferous declarations of 
theological doctrine. There are three weighty matters of the law 
— justice, mercy, and truth ; and of these the Teacher puts truth 
last, because that cannot be known but by a course of acts of jutv 
tice and love. But men put, in all their efforts, truth first, 
because they mean by it their own opinions ; and thus, while the 
world has many people who would suffer martyrdom in the cause 
of what they call truth, it has few who will suffer even a little 
inconvenience in that of justice and mercy. 



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